Iowa’s Insurance Commissioner, Attorney General and AARP director are going on another “Stop the Scammers” tour.
Insurance Commissioner Dough Ommen says they will visit 22 cities. “The Stop the Scammers approach is really to make sure consumers know ahead of time what to look for, because the best defense that we have in order to stop these scams is for consumers to know what they look like,” Ommen says. AARP Iowa director Michael Wagler says it is important to stay on top of the latest scam efforts. “Research shows that when a when we are aware of scams, we are 80 percent less likely to engage in those scams. Criminals are constantly trying new tactics,” he says.
Wagler says scams vary, but there are some common elements that let you know its a fraud. “A contact out of the blue that produces high emotion and contains urgency. If we could train our brains to recognize that the that these three elements equal a likely scam, we could also train our brains to react to those scams in a positive way,” Wagler says.
Ommen says the first Stop the Scammers tour helped them as people came forward and told them about things they had encountered. Ommen says bitcoin and investment scams continue to be prevalent, and their advice remains the same. “Double check, and we say double check before you invest. But frankly, when you’re dealing with anyone who you aren’t looking at across the table, you should double check. And that can mean different things,” Ommen says. “But the primary issue is you will be told by a scammer to not tell anyone, to be secret, to hold it in confidence. Any any individual that is telling you to not tell someone else is the sure sign of a scam.”
Ommen and Wagler talked at the first stop today (Friday) in the Des Moines suburb of Windsor Heights. Other stops are set for Ankeny, Bettendorf, Burlington, Cedar Falls, Charles City, Clinton, Council Bluffs, Decorah, Dubuque, Fairfield. Grinnell, Iowa City, Marion, Muscatine, North Liberty, Pella, Sioux City, Storm Lake, Waukee and Webster City.
You can find the full schedule at Iowafraudfighters.gov.