Beware of scammers trying to get hands on your stimulus money

Reporter: Rich Kolko
Published: Updated:
Credit: Pixabay

Many people are checking their accounts this week to see if money from the government is arriving, and that means the scammers may soon follow.

Everyone is calling the money showing up in your bank account “stimulus money,” but the government doesn’t call it that.

So if you get a call or an email from what looks like the government, referring to your money as a stimulus payment, that’s a big red flag.

“The federal government will not refer to it as a stimulus check or stimulus payment. They’re going to call it an economic impact payment. So if you hear the word stimulus, you know it’s not the federal government contacting you,” said Carrie Kerskie, president of Griffon Force.

Kerskie said there are going to be different scams going around trying to get at your money.

“They might contact you saying you owe them a processing fee or there are issues validating identities so they need you to confirm your social security number,” Kerskie said.

It doesn’t work that way. If you get the call, or the email looking for your personal information, just hang up or delete the email. You can report it to law enforcement or the FBI’s IC3.

And if you want to check on the status of your payment, go to the IRS website. Don’t search online for how to check the status, as bad guys will set up false web sites to grab your information.

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