According to the FTC, consumers reported losing nearly $9 billion to fraud in 2022, a 30% increase from the year prior.

And those are just the incidents that are reported. Some studies suggest that the actual amount

lost to scams last year is closer to $40 billion across 70 million Americans. One thing that

every report seems to agree on is that

scams are becoming more prevalent and more sophisticated. My wife and I just finished the new

documentary on HBO Max called Telemarketers. The series was filmed over a 20-year time period

by two employees of a major telemarketing call center in New Jersey, and the documentary is their

attempt to expose and take down the entire industry. The model was simple, that telemarketers

would call local civilians on behalf of real nonprofit organizations, organizations that appear

to support the local police or local fire department. The money collected did in fact go to the organization

that they were calling on behalf of, but only about 10% would go to the stated cause. The other 90%

would go into the pockets of the non-profit executives, the very people who hired the telemarketing

company to help them raise money in the first place. I don't want to spoil a show for those who are interested in watching, but in short,

the company these filmmakers work for is widely known for running one of the biggest

telemarketing scams in American history.

The company was ultimately shut down in 2010, and the owners were ordered to pay $19 million,

the largest ever civil penalty in an FTC

consumer protection case at that time. However, no criminal charges were filed and the owners

did not receive any jail time. While the original simple version of that scam still exist today,

more sophisticated, AI-enabled versions have taken it to a whole new

level. And unfortunately, the organizations running these phone scams regularly disappear and

reappear under different names, making it nearly impossible to track them down and even more

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