You look at your inbox and all of a sudden you have 100, 200, 500, 600 emails within a matter of minutes. Most of these emails are coming from list serves who you have never heard of and a lot of them will be in languages you don’t speak.

I was the lucky recipient of this several weeks ago, not long after I posted the first article on scammers so it’s probably no coincidence. You just never know. All in all I received well over 600 emails initially that night with another few hundred over the evening. To make it worse, it was right before I was headed off the bed. So instead of getting ready to relax, my heart is pounding and I’m in front of my computer trying to figure out what they are trying to hide.

My most recent post got a question from a reader, #David. Greenberg asking what scam I have been seeing most recently and I thought this would be good to share with the people I know because it is likely happening to them and/or their loved ones.

It starts like this. You get a text message like the ones I have in this article and they tell you that the USPS has a package for you but they don’t have your complete address information and if you don’t confirm your address within 12 hours. If you don’t do that, your package will be gone…

You have probably heard the stories of people being scammed when they get an urgent call claiming there is an issue with their grandson, grand daughter, nephew, niece, heck their own child that requires the grandparent to take immediate action to help them. This is commonly referred to as the kidnapped or arrested emergency phone call. The scammer claims to have one of your loved ones and play out the scenario that they have been arrested or kidnapped. I’ll unpack each variation under the assumption its your grandson, what to look for and what to do to avoid it. Please, please, please, share and discuss this with your Mom, Dad, Grandmas, Grandpas, Aunts & Uncles.

Your parent is the target of a scammer right now whether you know it or not. Whether your parent knows it or not. If you don’t start looking out for your parents its not a matter of IF, its a matter of WHEN they will be scammed and the statistics are showing they all will.

I went through my Father being scammed earlier this year and as I helped him get new accounts setup, teach him MFA and see how these horrible people operate. The FTC estimates that over $10B was lost by retirees to scammers last year and that is after you take out identity theft. To top all of this off, they think this number is low because retirees seldom report the crime.