The government has some new weapons aimed at imposters who try to take our money.

I'm David Brancaccio. A new set of rules from the Federal Trade Commission went into effect this week to stop fraudsters from impersonating businesses or

government agencies for instance when the creep calls saying it's the bank but

it's not there are also new tools to help the FTC get defrauded people money back.

These impersonation scams are on the rise, as Marketplace's Samantha Fields reports.

Last year in 2023, consumers lost more than 1.1 billion dollars to impersonation scams, according to the FTC.

That's more than three times what consumers reported in 2020.

Christopher Brown is an attorney at the FTC.

The financial injury is quite breathtaking.

Increasingly, this is happening via email and text,

though calls are still common. Theresa Murray at the US

Public Interest Research Group says scammers may say things like

Your bank account has been hacked and you need to click this link to stop it.

Or Amazon security and your account has been breached.

Often, she says they have a lot of your personal information already,

thanks to big data breaches.

If somebody calls you up and they sound very business like, very professional, they know your name,

they know your address, the easier it is to convince you that they are who they say they are.

Murray's best advice, never answer unexpected calls, texts, or emails, and never click the link.

In most cases, she says, people who lose money through these scams don't get it back. I'm

Samantha Fields for Marketplace. The United States and the UK have just signed a deal to

cooperate on safeguards for artificial intelligence.

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