Joining us today we have Michelle Reinen who is the administrator for the state's division of trade and consumer protection Thanks for joining us.
Well, thank you for having me
Every month we get together and we talk a little bit about some of the latest scams and I guess this is one that is it kind of comes up this time of year because we have school shopping going on boy a lot of people hate to hear that but yeah the school will be starting and
about a month and a half or so.
But there are some online scams that you wanted to tell us about, give us some advice about.
Yeah, absolutely.
And the day after the 4th of July, certainly saw my first back to school ads and we know that more and more...
School shopping happens online now with the class schedules and class needs and everything posted.
And this gives scammers an opportunity to convince parents to make a purchase and then never send the promised product or deliver poor quality products.
And online shopping scams were the most reported scam on social media, according to the Federal Trade Commission in 2025.
And more than 40% of people who lost money
to a scam on social media said that it started when they ordered a product they saw in an online ad.
So we want to be sure that this is expanded to the conversation of back to school, if you're doing it online.
And there's different ways that consumers can avoid wasting their money and energy during the back to school season if they look for those...
those techniques scammers are using, and that's dishonest ads, copycat websites, poor quality products, and fake online reviews.
Okay, is any of this kind of unsolicited?
Do things get sent to you, email, text, that type of thing?
Yeah, absolutely.
We see that these scammers send out posts.
Some of it's on social media.
Sometimes you're going to get a text or an email message if you're kind of tied to one of their email generation lists or connected in some way to the platform where they're posting that information.
So really pay attention.
Shoppers, you may receive that.
dishonest ad through the social media feed or that text message or in that email box and they're going to be promoting those more expensive items like bags and clothing and laptops that usually have limited supplies or are harder to find with good deals and the ads and links can lead to websites with this dishonest or outright scam.
aspect to them and when I say that I mean often it's going to be a copycat website leading you to a place that you normally trust, have familiarity with, things seem normal there but it will really be the scammer having posted that website and trying to trick you into using theirs rather than the legitimate website.
So should you use credit cards so you have a record of the purchase?
Yeah, absolutely.
That's probably the most solid tip we have for people is plan to pay with a credit card, which offers that anti-fraud protection.
Other things you can do is really try to confirm the web address where you're at.
Type it in yourself if you're able to, but watch for the security aspect.
before transmitting different information.
Try and do your own research by using search words like scam and complaint and pay attention to reviews that you're reading.
Really go down to the lowest rated reviews, read through them and find the common thread across multiple bad reviews and pay attention to those so you can see if they're legitimate reviews or if they might be fake posted reviews.
Okay Now this next one kind of caught my interest because my sister Diane does a little bit of investing in gold and apparently There are government imposter scams out there that which are leading to losses and gold bars
Yeah, this is a pretty sad story for us.
This one's hard.
It's a recent complaint that we received here at Dad Cap where a consumer liquidated their entire life savings, purchased gold bars, and then gave them to a scammer who was impersonating a government agency and they lost 2.5 million dollars in total.
So really hard one for us in working with partners on it.
But what happened is that the scam
Sammer impersonated the Federal Trade Commission, our national consumer protection partner.
by what they thought the FTC, the consumer was.
This scammer convinced the consumer that their finances were caught up in a scheme involving criminal cartel and money laundering, and then they claimed that they could help them, but in order to help, they had to sign a fake non-disclosure agreement, and they pressured them to keep this an entire secret from friends and family and everything.
And then the scammer talked the consumer through the process of liquidating their life savings, transferring it to a bank, converting it to hundreds of gold bars.
And the last step of this was that a scammer arrived at the consumer's house to pick up the gold bars, drove away, and now the consumers never saw or heard from this scammer again.
Wow.
OK.
Next one has to do with student loans.
The safe plan is ending, which of course is an opportunity for scammers.
Also.
Yeah, absolutely.
You said it right.
It's an opportunity for scammer anytime something changes in a normal process that we have our program ends.
And so.
Before July 1st, SAVE plan enrollees were notified that as of July 1st, they'd have 90 days to switch to another plan option or they'd be automatically placed into a plan.
And borrowers who are affected by these changes should immediately check their current repayment plan and status.
Find out what other plans are available to them and then take action to switch the plan that's best for them rather than having it switched.
But because of these changes and there being a time clock on it, scammers are going to try to steal borrowers personal and financial information.
They'll solicit fees for services that borrowers can do for themselves for free and try and take over borrowers accounts.
And so borrowers need to be sure that they
do not ever give out their FSA ID, that federal student aid identification number, and don't sign any third party authorizations or power of attorney forms because that will hand over the personal information that scammers need as well as give those legal rights to make decisions on borrower's behalf.
And remember that
If you're asked for a payment upfront for assistance, these fees are prohibited from legitimate loan service providers.
So that's a red flag to a scammer, as well as being told that there's a great offer, but there's this big limited time offer.
That's another red flag.
Pressure, right?
Pressure, pressure.
any promises about loan forgiveness or cancellation, independents can't do that.
So they can't make those promises, especially when they don't even know your circumstances.
You need to be sure that you just deal directly with your servicer or reach out to reliable resource information.
And one of those would be the Wisconsin Student Loan Helpline.
There's a hotline of 833.
589-0750 or the Wisconsin Coalition on Student Debt.
And you can find them at debtsmarts.org.
And all true information about what's happening is going to be owned out with the U.S.
Department of Education and that's studentaid.gov.
All good advice.
Michelle, if somebody wants to get a hold of DebtCAP, your office online.
Can you give us the phone number and the link, the website link?
You betcha.
You can reach the DadCat Consumer Protection Hotline at 800-422-7128 or go to our website at datcp.wi.gov.
All good stuff.
Michelle, thank you very much for joining us this morning.
Thank you.
You have a great day.
We've been talking with Michelle Reinhardt.
