MIAMI VALLEY — It’s Consumer Protection Week in Ohio, and the whole idea is to raise awareness to different scams out there to help protect your money.
News Center 7′s Consumer Reporter Xavier Hershovitz looked into the top scams the Ohio Department of Commerce is seeing.
“We really spend all year round educating on financial fraud,” said Viktoria Jurkovic, the Consumer Affairs Director for the Ohio Department of Commerce. “It’s just something that hits home to so many Ohioans.”
Jurkovic works to prevent Ohioans from falling victim to fraud. Each year she takes a look at some of the top scams stealing people’s money.
“Ohioans are still being plagued by identity theft,” Jurkovic said.
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Identity theft is broad. It includes everything from stealing tax refunds, getting things in your name, and credit card theft.
“If someone actively seeks out to steal your information, whether it’s personal or financial if they get any little bit of it, they can, they can kind of run with it,” Jurkovic said.
We talk a lot about protecting our information digitally, but you can’t forget to protect your information physically too like in your mail.
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“We need to be shredding that information, discarding our meal properly, or blacking out personal information, it is not unlikely for folks to go through our trash and get personal information,” Jurkovic said.
Imposter scams are also coming after Ohioans’ money. That’s when someone poses as law enforcement or a government agency and tries to pressure you to pay money they say you owe.
This is seen in the Miami Valley more than in some other parts of the state.
“We do see it in the Dayton-Springfield area where we do have sheriff’s offices, like give us some info, insider information like hey, this is still something that’s happening,” Jurkovic said.
If you fall victim to any of these scams, the Federal Trade Commission has a step-by-step guide on what to do.
One thing you should do is report it to law enforcement.
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