Desert Messenger

March 15, 201 www.DesertMessenger.com 25 BBB identifies top scams Like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ DesertMessengerNews Follow on Twitter @DesertMessenger @QuartzsiteRain Stay up to date with sex offenders in area Congress enacted Megan's Law in 1996. It made sex-offender registra- tion information public and created guidelines for community notifica- tion. Quartzsite Police Department issues notifications pursuant to ARS 13- 3825, the Community Notification of Sex Offender Law. Notification must be made when certain sex offenders are released from the Arizona State Prison, accepted under an Interstate Compact or released from the county jail back into the community. The Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS) has established a website according to the requirements of A.R.S. 13-3827. DPS is respon- sible for maintaining the site and annually verifying the addresses of all registered sex offenders. The purpose of the Arizona sex offender information website is to pro- vide information to the public concerning the location of sex offenders within Arizona. The site is NOT intended to supplant the community notification process, but rather, it allows the criminal justice community to promote public awareness concerning the potential threat that sex of- fenders pose to Arizona citizens. An informed public is a safer public! Visit the website to search for sex offenders in your area: http://www.azdps.gov/services/public/sex-offender Home Improvement and Fake Check Scams Head the List New algorithm identifies cons riskiest to consumers: men more vulnerable than women, and young adults at highest risk There is no doubt that scams have gone high tech, but the riskiest scam is the face-to-face home improvement scam, with fake check scams running a close second, according to the new Better Business Bureau (BBB) Risk Index - a sophisticated analysis that goes beyond volume to look at the risk each scam type poses. The BBB Institute for Marketplace Trust (BBB Institute) kicked off Na- tional Consumer Protection Week in the U.S. and Fraud Awareness Month in Canada with its inaugural BBB Scam Tracker Annual Risk Re- port, which provides comprehen- sive insight into scams based on the more than 32,000 reports made to BBB Scam Tracker in 2016. As with earlier BBB Institute re- search, there were real surprises within the data: men were more vulnerable than women in seven of the top ten scam categories, and consumers 18 to 24 are the most likely to lose money to a scam. New information uncovered in this anal- ysis is that younger consumers have a lower median loss than people in their top earning years, partly be- cause the types of scams aimed at older consumers tend to have high- er median losses. While seniors also tend to lose more money than Mil- lennials when they are scammed, they fall for scams far less often. The biggest takeaway is that no one is immune from the risk posed by scams. The BBB Risk Index measures risk along three dimensions: Exposure - how likely are you to be exposed to the con? Susceptibility - if you are exposed, how likely are you to lose money? Monetary Loss - if you do lose mon- ey, how much is it likely to be? Based on the BBB Risk Index, the riskiest top five scams in the U.S. and Canada are: • Home Improvement Scams (bbb.org/homescam) • Fake Checks and Money Orders (bbb.org/fakecheckscam) • Employment Scams (bbb.org/employmentscam) • Online Purchase Scams (bbb.org/webpurchasescam) • Advance Fee Loan Scams (bbb.org/loanscam) (Download the full report at bbb.org/RiskReport) The BBB Risk Index is a paradigm shift in how to calculate the true im- pact of different scams. In the past, virtually all involved organizations used volume alone to create top- scam lists, but this approach ignored two other equally critical factors: the susceptibility of the population and dollar losses. For instance, the scam most reported to BBB Scam Tracker in 2016 – by far – was the tax scam. However, consumers are savvy to this con and rarely fall for it, so it did not even make the BBB Risk Index's top ten. Employment scams were three times as risky for consumers as tax scams and ranked #3 on the BBB Risk Index. "Scams erode trust in the market- place and BBB Scam Tracker was created to advance BBB's mission by protecting consumers and ethi- cal businesses," notes Genie Bar- ton, president of the BBB Institute. "Scammers damage the reputations of the well-respected brands they spoof, and they slow commercial growth by making consumers hesi- tant to do business online. Every dollar stolen by a scammer is a dol- lar not spent with a reputable busi- ness that has competed fairly to earn those dollars." Home improvement scams, ranked #1 on the BBB Risk Index, was the only category in the top ten to rely on in-person contact. Because of the highly personal nature of this scam – someone literally at your doorstep – the exposure rate was low but the susceptibility rate and the median loss were both very high, making it the riskiest scam of all. Fake check scams take on a variety of approaches, but all rely on the fact that consumers assume that when a check "clears" their account and funds are made available, they are in the clear to spend those funds. In fact, it may take several weeks for a fake check to be detected and re- turned, and that includes cashier's checks and money orders. The BBB Institute also notes that fake checks are used in about 30 to 40 percent of employment scams and appear frequently in other scams. Whenev- er a consumer is asked to deposit a check and then send funds back out for any reason, that's a big red flag, according to BBB. The full report is available at bbb. org/RiskReport. Consumers and businesses are urged to report all scams to BBB Scam Tracker at bbb. org/scamtracker, whether or not money is actually lost.

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