FORT MYERS, Fla. (WINK)\u2014The FBI says more than a million Americans fell victim to cybercrime and identity theft last year for the first time ever.<\/p>\n
Florida residents alone lost more than $1.5 billion to scammers.<\/p>\n
One Fort Myers man who came to WINK Listens told WINK Investigates reporter Ryan Kruger he’s been a victim several times.<\/p>\n
Scammers took nearly $21 billion from Americans last year, according to new numbers just released from the FBI.<\/p>\n
That’s a staggering 25% increase from the year before.<\/p>\n
Every day last year, 3,000 people fell victim to cybercrime and identity theft in the U.S., according to the FBI. The latest numbers from the FBI show Florida had the third highest losses last year, behind only Texas and California.<\/p>\n
Phishing, extortion and investment fraud were the most common complaints.<\/p>\n
Fort Myers consumer attorney Zachary Zermay says the scammers are often overseas.<\/p>\n
“There’s a bunch of different tools that law enforcement have, but unfortunately, realistically speaking, if they’re overseas, there’s not much that can be done,” Zermay said.<\/p>\n
WINK News first introduced viewers to Dayee Jacob two weeks ago at a WINK Listens event at Florida Southwestern State College in south Fort Myers. He says he had his identity stolen three times in six months.<\/p>\n
“I was flabbergasted. I said, how could this happen?” Jacob said.<\/p>\n
Jacob tells Kruger that despite contacting law enforcement and putting freezes on his credit, the thieves still struck.<\/p>\n
The FBI says personal data theft, like what happened to Jacob, cost Americans $1.3 billion last year.<\/p>\n
“They were able to lift the credit freeze that I placed on my account, and then they applied for another credit card,” Jacob said.<\/p>\n
Scammers often get personal information and apply for loans or credit cards.<\/p>\n
Zermay says if you believe you are a victim, it’s important to immediately contact law enforcement, even if you don’t think you can get your money back.<\/p>\n
“But what it does do by contacting law enforcement, it helps develop a record that which you can go ahead and bring it to the three big credit reporting bureaus to show that, yes, I’m taking this seriously. Yes, this actually happened,” Zermay said.<\/p>\n
The latest report only shows the number of complaints to the FBI. But many people don’t admit to being scammed, or they may not even be aware they were ripped off, so the true number of victims is likely much higher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT MYERS, Fla. (WINK)\u2014The FBI says more than a million Americans fell victim to cybercrime and identity theft…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[4535,209,211,210,25879,2364,28,11953,897,106655,1387,1598,25880,25881,4571],"class_list":{"0":"post-241198","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cape-coral","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-cape-coral","10":"tag-cape-coral-headlines","11":"tag-cape-coral-news","12":"tag-confidence-tricks","13":"tag-federal-bureau-of-investigation","14":"tag-florida","15":"tag-florida-southwestern-state-college","16":"tag-fort-myers","17":"tag-fort-myers-consumer-attorney","18":"tag-fraud","19":"tag-law-enforcement","20":"tag-social-engineering","21":"tag-spamming","22":"tag-united-states"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}