There is a new Scam Of The Week where bad guys are trying to trick people into clicking on phishing links to receive an FTC refund, with the twist that the refund is actually real.

The FTC first took action against J. K. Publications, Inc in 1998. These scammers purchased access to the credit card account numbers of more than three million Visa and MasterCard holders from a California bank with the pretext to confirm that the customers had valid credit cards and debit cards.

However, back at the ranch, they made illegal charges on the cards for X-rated Websites. Quite a few of the people who had been fraudulently charged didn’t even own a PC at that time!

The FTC was able to quickly shut down the scam, but J.K. Publications and the people involved in the scam managed to hide millions of the fraudulently obtained dollars in off-shore banks. It took the FTC a very long time to get the money back but they are at the moment mailing 322,000 checks to victims of this scam.

So, lazy bad guys just go to the FTC website to get ideas for phishing attacks and start sending them to millions of people. I suggest you send the following to your employees, friends and family:

There is a new Scam Of The Week where bad guys have taken an actual past scam that the Federal Trade Commission has resolved and is now refunding money on. Bad guys take these FTC cases and create a phishing attack out of them.

Here is the rule: If you receive any emails from an official-sounding organization that promises you a refund for any amount, be very careful and never click on any links or open any attachment you did not ask for. Delete the email. (OPTIONAL: or use the KnowBe4 Phish Alert Button)

https://info.knowbe4.com/free-phish-alert