Scams and money.

As I mentioned before, I received two different texts on my phone offering me jobs which according to everything I read, are scams.  They are variations of the fake check scam where you are sent a check, you deposit it, withdraw a certain amount and wire it off to a third party, leaving you with a few hundred for doing very little.  By the time you find out the check is fake, the scammers have moved on.

I wondered how effective these scams are because I had a family member come to me about the text offering her $550 per week for driving her wrapped car around town.  I told her it was a scam so she wouldn't get ripped off. They appeal to those who want to make money quick.

I found a site from Australia called Scam Watch which provides data in chart form  showing the types of scams most common for 2018 up to the end of June.  They analyze the data or the year showing number of reports versus amount lost, the top 10 scams by amount lost or number of reports, amount lost versus method they were contacted, the age group of the victims, amount or number of reports by gender, and amount lost versus number of reports broken down by states.

You can find the information broken down by the year back to 2015,  by the month for each year,  by the type of scam or all scams or by both year, month, and scam.  Great data for students to take and enter into a spreadsheet to further analyze the data by comparing months, or years.  They could interpret the data to draw conclusions.

The above information but what about Americans?  According to Market Watch  the number of scams rose almost 60% over a one year period from 2015 to 2016.  In the same time period, it is said that one in ten have lost on average $430 to a scam to total $9.5 Billion.  In 2015, the average amount lost was $274 per person who participated in a scam.

According to another article from Market Watch, the amount of money lost to a scam increased 7 percent from 2016 to 2017.  In addition 40 percent who made fraud complaints lost money in the 20 to 29 age group as compared to only 18% in the 70 and older group.  Although fewer seniors lost money, they lost more at $621 versus the $400 for the younger group.  Over all, the number of complaints dropped from 2.98 million to 2.68 million, totaling $905 million, an increase of 7%. 

One last article is from the Federal Trade Commission's Consumer which lists information on the top frauds of 2017.  The number one scam was the imposter scam in which 350,000 people lost $328 million. This is where someone contacts you pretending to be a loved one, a government official, or someone else they are not. This is a great article to have students practice extracting specific pieces of information to interpret.

This is a cool, real life use of mathematics.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.