The Social Security Administration is sounding the alarm about an increase in reported coup attempts, with figures showing an increase during the pandemic.
“I am deeply concerned that swindlers are still deceiving Americans,” Social Security Commissioner Andrew Saul said on Wednesday in a call to reporters. “Our programs require the public to interact with us and we cannot allow fraud to affect that communication or the public’s trust in us.”
The agency received more than 718,000 telephone scam reports in the fiscal year ended September 30, totaling almost $ 45 million in losses. That is more than 478,000 in the previous year.
Fraudulent calls during the pandemic, when millions of Americans were left with no way out, went from less than 6,000 in April to more than 100,000 in September.
Since October 1, there have been more than 300,000 reports of scams, an increase of more than 60 percent in the entire fiscal year 2019.
The most common scams, Saul said, involve people who claim to represent credit card companies, businesses and the Social Security Administration in an attempt to steal an individual’s personal information and money. Social Security, he added, has been the most common type of government imposter schemes reported to the agency and the Federal Trade Commission in the past year.
“Isolation and fear are really the main elements of this,” said Gail Ennis, the agency’s inspector general.