**Scams and Misinformation During the Coronavirus Pandemic**

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread, scammers and con artists have taken advantage of the situation to target vulnerable individuals. In this article, we will explore five common scams that are currently circulating, including fake contact tracing messages, phishing scams related to stimulus checks, and fraudulent unemployment claims.

**Fake Contact Tracing Messages**

In an effort to contain the spread of the virus, many states have implemented contact tracing programs to identify individuals who may have come into contact with someone who has tested positive for coronavirus. These programs typically involve reaching out to individuals who have been in close proximity to a confirmed case and asking them to self-isolate or undergo testing. However, scammers are taking advantage of this effort by sending out fake text messages or robo-calls that claim to be from the contact tracing program. These messages often contain links or instructions that ask the recipient to sign up for further information or take some other action. In reality, these messages are usually phishing attempts designed to steal sensitive information or lead victims to malicious websites.

To avoid falling victim to these scams, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) advises that any real contact tracers will not ask you to download anything, click on links, or provide personal information such as your social security number. Instead, they may send a text message informing you that you will be contacted by a representative, and then follow up with a call. Legitimate contact tracers also would never request payment or sensitive financial information.

**Fake Stimulus Check Scams**

The government has implemented several stimulus programs to help individuals affected by the pandemic, including direct payments to eligible recipients. Unfortunately, scammers are targeting these programs by sending out fake mailers, emails, and texts that claim to be from the government. One example of this scam was a car dealership in [location] that sent out mailers claiming to offer "stimulus" checks for individuals who purchased certain vehicles during a sale event.

The FTC reports that scammers have been sanctioned for such deceptive practices, including fines for violating consumer protection laws. The agency warns that these scams often rely on sophisticated graphics and language designed to mimic government communications, making it difficult for victims to distinguish between real and fake messages.

**Phishing Scams related to Coronavirus Relief Funds**

Another scam circulating is an email claiming that the recipient is eligible for a "coronavirus relief fund" called the Global Empowerment Fund. The email may contain a link or instructions telling the recipient to sign up for further information or take some other action. In reality, these emails are phishing attempts designed to steal sensitive information such as login credentials, credit card numbers, and social security numbers.

**Fraudulent Unemployment Claims**

As the number of people filing for unemployment has increased significantly due to the pandemic, scammers have taken advantage of this trend by filing false claims on behalf of individuals who have not lost their jobs. This can result in the scammer receiving payment for the claim, which may be deposited into a bank account that has been previously compromised.

Victims of identity theft may receive notice from their state or local unemployment office stating that they have filed for unemployment, even if they had not done so themselves. In this case, it is essential to contact the agency and report the incident immediately. Additionally, victims should consider freezing their credit to prevent further unauthorized activity.

**Staying Vigilant**

To avoid falling victim to these scams, it is crucial to stay informed about the latest developments in consumer protection and pandemic-related scams. The FTC has a webpage dedicated to tracking new scams, which can be accessed at [link]. Additionally, the agency provides guidance on how to spot phishing attempts and protect personal information.

In conclusion, while the coronavirus pandemic presents numerous challenges, it also creates opportunities for scammers and con artists to target vulnerable individuals. By staying informed and vigilant, we can reduce the risk of falling victim to these scams and stay safe during this challenging time.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhow's it going guys I'm Theo Joe and it's been about six months since I last made a new scams video so this one's gonna be an updated version for the middle of 2020 it's now July so for this video I've got five new frauds and scams that you definitely want to watch out for at least be aware of so you don't fall victim to them and no surprise a lot of these do have to do in some way with the coronavirus but not all of them exactly so first up we have one that you most of you are not gonna have to directly worry about but if you do own a business then possibly basically there's this random company which ended up being like one person running the company created these laminated cards that claim that the holder is exempt from having to wear a mask even if it's required by your state law and basically gives the reason that wearing a mask is a detriment to their health either mental or physical and this card says that and has some laws cited it has the Department of Justice seal on it to make it look all official and it suggests if a business owner still requires that person wear a mask after showing this exempt card that they can be subject to fines from the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Department of Justice stuff like that even though it's complete nonsense there's no exemption cards the Department of Justice obviously has said that this is fraudulently labeling it with their seal and this organization is pretty much just made up I mean it might be a real thing but I don't even know if it's registered as a real company it's just some random website someone made so there might be copycats it might not look exactly like this I imagine probably people make up their own fake card saying you're exempt but watch out for these there are no actual exemption cards so if you see someone with something similar just know that they're full of hot air all right next up number two this one was actually kind of surprising the FBI is reporting that there are fake Cova 19 antibody tests going around and they imply that there's actual physical fake tests being sold so you might see an advertisement and actually pay for one of these tests get it and it's from some random website that is not affiliated or approved by the FDA all and then you get the test and it might just give a random result or some predetermined fake result and you didn't get tested at all and I believe they present themselves as one of those who test so it's not one you mail back or anything like that it's one where you maybe do a blood prick or something and put it into like a testing case thing and then it gives you a fake result basically that's from my understanding based on what the report says but there are apparently other types of fake advertisements where they don't even send you the test at all they either take your money and they don't send it out or they advertise it as a free test and then collect all the required information which happens to have your social security number and I guess not your payment info because they're claiming it would be free but anything you do provide to them is just stolen and then of course they don't send you any tests so basically just be extremely suspicious if you see any advertisements like on Facebook or anywhere really for a at home test especially if it's saying oh it's free now there are legitimate antibody tests out there obviously I don't know if there are any that are at home exactly but you can go on the FDA's website they should have a list of all the approved ones and I know there are legitimate companies like Abbott Labs and also LabCorp that do have at home tests I don't know for antibodies but they have ones for active infections then you mail it back so just make sure you actually do your research on what website you're buying it from so just make sure it's FDA approved on the FDA website and I would be doing research on these tests anyway myself because there are several out there some of them may be more accurate than others so just look things up before you put any information now that you know that there are actual fake ones out there all right moving on to number three we have fake contact tracers now you may know in your country or in the u.s. different states have their health boards doing contact tracing where if you get a positive coronavirus test they may reach out to you and ask you who you've had contact with over certain amount of time stuff like that just to try and alert other people that they may have been exposed to someone who had the corona virus there are legitimate cases of this happening this is what they do but apparently scammers are sending out fake texts robo calls that are saying oh you've been exposed go to this link to sign up stuff like that and then it ends up being something like a phishing link or they require payment something like that so there's one specific example a new site was reporting on it's a text message it says someone who came in contact you tested positive or has shown symptoms for Cova 19 and recommends you self isolate / get tested and then there's a link there and it is a phishing link so to be able to spot the fake ones the FTC basically says that any real contact tracers are not going to have you download anything they're not going to have you click any links or anything like that they're gonna probably call you they also said that legitimate contact tracers may send you a text message but it will only be to tell you that you will be getting a call soon so it's not like you have to do everything over the internet ever they also say that obviously a contract tracer that's legitimate will never ask you for any highly personal information like social security number or financial info they may require basic information like your name and stuff like that but they'll never require payment because this is a thing run by the state and it's all taxpayer funded so anyway moving on to number 4 we have fake stimulus checks of various kinds I think I might have talked about this in a previous video talking about coronavirus specific scams but there have been more that have apparently popped up one example that might not have been super obvious if you didn't know about it is there was this car dealership that was having a sale and they basically tricked people into thinking it was some kind of stimulus government program so they sent out these mailers and it was called something like the economic automotive stimulus relief program and it was completely faked they made the mailer look like it was sponsored by the government in some way and that this was part of the government stimulus even though it was basically just a sale and I believe in this case the FTC did sanction them because it was so deceptive and misinformation that they got fine or something like that there's another scam email going around that claims that you're eligible to get money from some coronavirus relief fund called the global empowerment fund that's completely made-up if you go to the information or the link on the email it's just a phishing email and they steal your information and all that finally for number five we have fraudulent unemployment claims so obviously with unemployment being so high a lot of scammers have taken advantage of this trying to slip through the cracks and basically file for unemployment fraudulently for people who have not lost their job at all if this does happen to you then you may get a notice from your or local governments unemployment office saying that you filed for unemployment and if you did not do that then you need to contact them and obviously tell them that your identity was stolen and that also may mean that you should probably freeze your credit stuff like that because they obviously have your social security number and how it works apparently is they'll file for unemployment and then have the payments go into the scammers bank account so you don't even get any notice about this unless the government sends you something and then you really want to be quick because by that time they may have already gotten payments so if you've previously been a victim of identity theft this is definitely one to keep an eye out on because someone may already have all your social security info and I don't know if there's any way you can really freeze anything like that like you can a bank account so just be aware of it so those are the five that I want to talk about if you want to keep up to date on these the FTC does have a great page where they usually post new scams and stuff that you can look at and maybe you can bookmark it whatever look at every few weeks and they post new scams that people are doing I'll put a lot of links in the description for example that link to the FTC also one for the FDA that has a list of actual real tests for anybody's stuff like that so you can look down there now if you want to keep watching the next video I'd recommend is the video I made at the beginning of the year talking about new scams because those have not stopped certainly so you can click on that video right there if you want so thanks so much for watching guys and I'll see you in the next videohow's it going guys I'm Theo Joe and it's been about six months since I last made a new scams video so this one's gonna be an updated version for the middle of 2020 it's now July so for this video I've got five new frauds and scams that you definitely want to watch out for at least be aware of so you don't fall victim to them and no surprise a lot of these do have to do in some way with the coronavirus but not all of them exactly so first up we have one that you most of you are not gonna have to directly worry about but if you do own a business then possibly basically there's this random company which ended up being like one person running the company created these laminated cards that claim that the holder is exempt from having to wear a mask even if it's required by your state law and basically gives the reason that wearing a mask is a detriment to their health either mental or physical and this card says that and has some laws cited it has the Department of Justice seal on it to make it look all official and it suggests if a business owner still requires that person wear a mask after showing this exempt card that they can be subject to fines from the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Department of Justice stuff like that even though it's complete nonsense there's no exemption cards the Department of Justice obviously has said that this is fraudulently labeling it with their seal and this organization is pretty much just made up I mean it might be a real thing but I don't even know if it's registered as a real company it's just some random website someone made so there might be copycats it might not look exactly like this I imagine probably people make up their own fake card saying you're exempt but watch out for these there are no actual exemption cards so if you see someone with something similar just know that they're full of hot air all right next up number two this one was actually kind of surprising the FBI is reporting that there are fake Cova 19 antibody tests going around and they imply that there's actual physical fake tests being sold so you might see an advertisement and actually pay for one of these tests get it and it's from some random website that is not affiliated or approved by the FDA all and then you get the test and it might just give a random result or some predetermined fake result and you didn't get tested at all and I believe they present themselves as one of those who test so it's not one you mail back or anything like that it's one where you maybe do a blood prick or something and put it into like a testing case thing and then it gives you a fake result basically that's from my understanding based on what the report says but there are apparently other types of fake advertisements where they don't even send you the test at all they either take your money and they don't send it out or they advertise it as a free test and then collect all the required information which happens to have your social security number and I guess not your payment info because they're claiming it would be free but anything you do provide to them is just stolen and then of course they don't send you any tests so basically just be extremely suspicious if you see any advertisements like on Facebook or anywhere really for a at home test especially if it's saying oh it's free now there are legitimate antibody tests out there obviously I don't know if there are any that are at home exactly but you can go on the FDA's website they should have a list of all the approved ones and I know there are legitimate companies like Abbott Labs and also LabCorp that do have at home tests I don't know for antibodies but they have ones for active infections then you mail it back so just make sure you actually do your research on what website you're buying it from so just make sure it's FDA approved on the FDA website and I would be doing research on these tests anyway myself because there are several out there some of them may be more accurate than others so just look things up before you put any information now that you know that there are actual fake ones out there all right moving on to number three we have fake contact tracers now you may know in your country or in the u.s. different states have their health boards doing contact tracing where if you get a positive coronavirus test they may reach out to you and ask you who you've had contact with over certain amount of time stuff like that just to try and alert other people that they may have been exposed to someone who had the corona virus there are legitimate cases of this happening this is what they do but apparently scammers are sending out fake texts robo calls that are saying oh you've been exposed go to this link to sign up stuff like that and then it ends up being something like a phishing link or they require payment something like that so there's one specific example a new site was reporting on it's a text message it says someone who came in contact you tested positive or has shown symptoms for Cova 19 and recommends you self isolate / get tested and then there's a link there and it is a phishing link so to be able to spot the fake ones the FTC basically says that any real contact tracers are not going to have you download anything they're not going to have you click any links or anything like that they're gonna probably call you they also said that legitimate contact tracers may send you a text message but it will only be to tell you that you will be getting a call soon so it's not like you have to do everything over the internet ever they also say that obviously a contract tracer that's legitimate will never ask you for any highly personal information like social security number or financial info they may require basic information like your name and stuff like that but they'll never require payment because this is a thing run by the state and it's all taxpayer funded so anyway moving on to number 4 we have fake stimulus checks of various kinds I think I might have talked about this in a previous video talking about coronavirus specific scams but there have been more that have apparently popped up one example that might not have been super obvious if you didn't know about it is there was this car dealership that was having a sale and they basically tricked people into thinking it was some kind of stimulus government program so they sent out these mailers and it was called something like the economic automotive stimulus relief program and it was completely faked they made the mailer look like it was sponsored by the government in some way and that this was part of the government stimulus even though it was basically just a sale and I believe in this case the FTC did sanction them because it was so deceptive and misinformation that they got fine or something like that there's another scam email going around that claims that you're eligible to get money from some coronavirus relief fund called the global empowerment fund that's completely made-up if you go to the information or the link on the email it's just a phishing email and they steal your information and all that finally for number five we have fraudulent unemployment claims so obviously with unemployment being so high a lot of scammers have taken advantage of this trying to slip through the cracks and basically file for unemployment fraudulently for people who have not lost their job at all if this does happen to you then you may get a notice from your or local governments unemployment office saying that you filed for unemployment and if you did not do that then you need to contact them and obviously tell them that your identity was stolen and that also may mean that you should probably freeze your credit stuff like that because they obviously have your social security number and how it works apparently is they'll file for unemployment and then have the payments go into the scammers bank account so you don't even get any notice about this unless the government sends you something and then you really want to be quick because by that time they may have already gotten payments so if you've previously been a victim of identity theft this is definitely one to keep an eye out on because someone may already have all your social security info and I don't know if there's any way you can really freeze anything like that like you can a bank account so just be aware of it so those are the five that I want to talk about if you want to keep up to date on these the FTC does have a great page where they usually post new scams and stuff that you can look at and maybe you can bookmark it whatever look at every few weeks and they post new scams that people are doing I'll put a lot of links in the description for example that link to the FTC also one for the FDA that has a list of actual real tests for anybody's stuff like that so you can look down there now if you want to keep watching the next video I'd recommend is the video I made at the beginning of the year talking about new scams because those have not stopped certainly so you can click on that video right there if you want so thanks so much for watching guys and I'll see you in the next video\n"