There are no blue lights or yellow tape, yet there’s a crime being committed more and more across the country and right here in our community.
“The problem is almost epidemic proportions,” says Jeremy Baker, Assistant Special Agent in Charge for the Memphis Division of the FBI.
Baker told WREG, “I think there’s not a day that goes by that we don’t hear about some really, really terrible situation where a good person has been defrauded out of their hard earned money.”
Scams are skyrocketing and the WREG Investigators uncovered the numbers that prove it.
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 850,000 complaints in 2024 with losses of $16.6 billion, an increase of more than 30 percent from the previous year.
While fraudsters don’t discriminate and everyone is a potential victim, the group getting hit the hardest is elders.
In fact, of that $16.6 billion in losses, nearly $5 billion belonged to those 60 and older.
Agent Baker said, “We can all think of somebody we know and love that has been victimized by a scam. They’re getting better. They’re getting more believable. And unfortunately, they’re disproportionately affecting senior citizens.”
Some of the costliest crimes targeting older people include investment, tech support and romance scams.
Special Agent Morgan Morgan is with the Secret Service. They teamed up with the FBI to create a special task force in Memphis to crack down on fraud and scams.
He told WREG, “It can be a simple Facebook message that then turns into, a loss of your life savings.”
Morgan said it is possible to get money returned back to victims, but that’s rare and requires people to report the scam almost immediately.
“Three years ago, I think we were able to get roughly $6.5 million reverse back to, victims here in Memphis, which is which is a great success story,” Morgan explained.
Not only are cyber crimes dealing with fraud and scams underreported, but making matters worse is the fact that crooks are getting more creative and using AI to convince victims to hand over their hard-earned money.
Agent Baker says AI tools allow crooks to avoid typical scammer grammar like misspellings which are always a red flag of a scam. Plus, he told us deep fakes with video and audio are more believable and easier to fall for.
Baker explained, “So instead of the email, just making it sound like a boss is telling an employee to wire money, now you can actually see somebody hear somebody, and it looks like their boss and people will wire the money.”
Both agencies sat down one on one with NewsChannel 3 to talk about a new campaign aimed at stopping the crimes before they can start. It’s called ‘Take a Beat‘.
Baker said, “The FBI is trying right now to tell people, to take a beat. Just think about what is happening…the criminals will always try to have a sense of urgency and make it sound like something terrible is going to happen if you don’t do what they’re asking you to do.”
Baker continued, “It just emphasizes, try to take a step back, take a minute to think about what is being asked. If it’s email, try to pick up the phone. Try to go talk to somebody in person…Think before you click and again, if it sounds too good to be true, it generally is.”
The agency is hoping those three simple words, take a beat, can save millions of dollars for thousands of would be victims.
WREG INVESTIGATORS
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