Searching for a scam? How an online search could cost you
PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Michele Perrella wanted to check the balance of her 401K, so she googled her financial institution.
She clicked on the top search result and was met with a pop-up message: “Your account has been locked due to suspicious activities,” Perrella recalled reading. “Call customer service at this number.”
She did, and it landed her right in the middle of an elaborate scam.
“The person who answered the phone said to me, ‘Oh yes, someone has tried to use your accounts to purchase online pornography and go to online gambling sites,’” Perrella said.
The man on the phone asked Perrella for remote access to her computer and gave her a supposed federal case number.
“He even said to me, ‘If by any chance this call gets disconnected, you do not answer any other phone calls coming in. Do not contact anyone. Your phone has been compromised, and they’re listening,’” she said. “When he got back on, he was like, ‘I’m so sorry this is happening to you. My mother is your age. I want to help you so badly.’”
It seemed like a dire situation, but the person on the phone had a way to fix everything.
“He said to me, ‘Because this was initiated through debit card, and it looks like you initiated it, we need to create another transaction so that we can have you deny it, and that will void all of this,’” Perrella said.
That transaction, according to the man on the call, needed to happen with gift cards. Things started to sound fishy, but Perrella pushed forward. She went to the store and bought $1,500 worth of gift cards, as she was instructed.
“Right there and then, he made me scratch off the identification numbers for those gift cards and read the numbers to him,” she said.
The money was gone. Perrella still didn’t realize it.
FBI Supervisory Special Agent Mary Gleason said scams like this can easily start on search engines.
“It’s very sophisticated call center networks,” she told On Your Side. “Bad actors have realized, ‘Oh, I can pay this internet provider, that internet provider, to actually have my ad sponsored.’”
The ad goes to the top of the search, and the spoofed sites look legitimate.
“They change one letter, and as a consumer I don’t realize it, I click on it, and it looks like it’s going to my bank’s real website, and I log in,” Gleason said. “As soon as you do that, that’s when they have your credentials.”
So before you click, look carefully at search results. Gleason said you should scroll right past the sponsored links.
“You’re going to want to click on the one further down that’s known or something that you have saved in your browser,” she added.
In the past several years, Google says it has made strides in identifying spam in its search results.
“We have clear spam policies against deceptive tactics, and when we find behavior that violates our policies, we take action. While there are bad actors who attempt to circumvent our protections, Google’s systems are highly effective at surfacing high quality information and fighting spam and malicious behavior across Search,” the company wrote in a statement to On Your Side.
According to a Google spokesperson, the company has a series of advertiser verification programs to detect and prevent scams. Advertisers are required to provide information about their business and identity. The company also uses an AI spam prevention tool called SpamBrain to help catch spam sites.
Still, Perrella believes more needs to be done to protect people.
“This is out of control,” she said. “I don’t want to end up on my kid’s couch, poor as a dog, because somebody took my retirement savings.”
Scams should be reported to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. Even if the agency is not able to recover money lost, the report could help agents identify patters and put a stop to some of the scammers.
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