Schemes & Definitions

Schemes:

The following is a list of different types of financial fraud schemes provided by the FBI in its AIC report for 2023. Definitions were taken from the FBI AIC Report – 2023, unless otherwise noted.

• Advanced Fee: An individual pays money to someone in anticipation of receiving something of greater value in return, but instead, receives significantly less than expected or nothing.
• Affinity Fraud: a fraudulent financial scheme that involves a scammer who is or appears to be part of a community or interest group. The scammer builds trust within the group, and exploits that trust to push fraudulent, non-existent, and too-good-to-be-true investments on other members of the group. (NASAA)
• Business Email Compromise (BEC): BEC is a scam targeting businesses or individuals working with suppliers and/or businesses regularly performing wire transfer payments. These sophisticated scams are carried out by fraudsters by compromising email accounts and other forms of communication such as phone numbers and virtual meeting applications, through social engineering or computer intrusion techniques to conduct unauthorized transfer of funds.
• Business/Job Opportunities/Employment: Individuals believe they are legitimately employed or have a business opportunity and lose or launder money/items while doing business.
• Confidence/Romance: An individual believes they are in a relationship (family, friendly, or romantic) and are tricked into sending money, personal and financial information, or items of value to the perpetrator or to launder money or items to assist the perpetrator. This includes the Grandparent’s Scheme and any scheme in which the perpetrator preys on the targeted individual’s “heartstrings”.
• Credit Card Fraud/Check Fraud: Credit card fraud is a wide-ranging term for theft and fraud committed using a credit card or any similar payment mechanism (ACH, EFT, recurring charge, etc.) as a fraudulent source of funds in a transaction.
• Crimes Against Children: Anything related to the exploitation of children, including child abuse.
• Data Breach: A data breach in the cyber context is the use of a computer intrusion to acquire confidential or secured information. This does not include computer intrusions targeting personally owned computers, systems, devices, or personal accounts such as social media or financial accounts.
• Identity Theft: Someone wrongfully obtains and uses personally identifiable information in some way that involves fraud or deception, typically for economic gain.
• Investment: Deceptive practice that induces investors to make purchases based on false information. These scams usually offer those targeted large returns with minimal risk. (Retirement, 401K, Ponzi, Pyramid, etc.).
• Government Impersonation: A government official is impersonated in an attempt to collect money.
• IPR/Copyright and Counterfeit: The illegal theft and use of others’ ideas, inventions, and creative expressions – what’s called intellectual property – everything from trade secrets and proprietary products and parts to movies, music, and software.
• Jury Duty Schemes: This scam usually starts with a phone call or an email from someone claiming to be from the police department or a court official. They say you missed jury duty even though you never got a jury duty notice. They’ll tell you there’s a warrant out for your arrest, and the only way to cancel it is to pay a fine. If you refuse, they may threaten you with jail. Or they might ask for personal information like your Social Security number or date of birth to steal your identity. To make the scam seem real, scammers also might give you a fake sheriff’s badge number and case number. (FTC)
• Lottery/Sweepstakes/Prizes/Inheritance: An individual is contacted about winning a lottery or sweepstakes they never entered, or to collect on an inheritance from an unknown relative.
• Mortgage Foreclosure Relief: Scammers target desperate homeowners looking to avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes. These scammers promise they’ll get changes to your loan so you can keep your home. But they want you to pay them an upfront fee before giving you any services or getting any results.
• Non-Payment/Non-Delivery: Goods or services are shipped, and payment is never rendered (non- payment). Payment is sent, and goods or services are never received, or are of lesser quality (non-delivery).
• Overpayment: An individual is sent a payment/commission and is instructed to keep a portion of the payment and send the remainder to another individual or business.
• Personal Data Breach: A leak/spill of personal data which is released from a secure location to an untrusted environment. Also, a security incident in which an individual’s sensitive, protected, or confidential data is copied, transmitted, viewed, stolen, or used by an unauthorized individual.
• Pig-Butchering: involves fraudsters contacting targets seemingly at random, then gaining trust before ultimately manipulating their targets into phony investments and disappearing with the funds. (FINRA)
• Real Estate: Loss of funds from a real estate investment or fraud involving rental or timeshare property.
• SIM Swap: The use of unsophisticated social engineering techniques against mobile service providers to transfer a victim’s phone service to a mobile device in the criminal’s possession.
• Tech Support: Subject posing as technical or customer support/service.

Those who seek to defraud Alaskans will come to the table assuming that you are not as familiar with the financial industry and its many associated terms.

Definitions

Call it what it is……

Definitions were taken from the FBI AIC Report – 2023, unless otherwise noted.

• Blockchain Technology: a blockchain is essentially a set of connected blocks of information on an online ledger. Each block contains a set of transactions that have been independently verified by each validator on a network. (NASAA)
• Botnet: A botnet is a group of two or more computers controlled and updated remotely for an illegal purchase such as a Distributed Denial of Service or Telephony Denial of Service attack or other nefarious activity.
• Cryptocurrency: digital or virtual currencies underpinned by cryptographic systems. They enable secure online payments without the use of third-party intermediaries. "Crypto" refers to the various encryption algorithms and cryptographic techniques that safeguard these entries, such as elliptical curve encryption, public-private key pairs, and hashing functions. (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether) (NASAA)
• Digital Currency: a form of currency that is available only in digital or electronic form. (NASAA)
• Extortion: Unlawful extraction of money or property through intimidation or undue exercise of authority. It may include threats of physical harm, criminal prosecution, or public exposure.
• e-Wallet: a digital system that allows payments online via a computer or mobile device such as a smartphone. (NASAA)
• Hacked: to get into someone else’s computer system without permission in order to find out information or do something illegal. (Cambridge Dictionary)
• Harassment/Stalking: Repeated words, conduct, or action that serve no legitimate purpose and are directed at a specific person to annoy, alarm, or distress that person. Engaging in a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to fear for his/her safety or the safety of others or suffer substantial emotional distress.
• Malware: Software or code intended to damage, disable, or capable of copying itself onto a computer and/or computer systems to have a detrimental effect or destroy data.
• Phishing/Spoofing: The use of unsolicited email, text messages, and telephone calls purportedly from a legitimate company requesting personal, financial, and/or login credentials.
• Ransomware: A type of malicious software designed to block access to a computer system until money is paid.
• Virtual Currency: Virtual currency is an electronic medium of exchange that, unlike real money, is not controlled or backed by a central government or central bank. Virtual currency includes crypto-currency such as Bitcoin, Ripple or Litecoin. These currencies can be bought or sold through virtual currency exchanges, used to purchase goods or services where accepted and are stored in an electronic wallet, also known as an e-Wallet. (NASAA)
• Threats of Violence: An expression of an intention to inflict pain, injury, self-harm, or death not in the context of extortion.