Each year, Hispanic Heritage Month celebrates the numerous contributions that Hispanic Americans and Latinos have made to our country. This year’s theme, Esperanza: A Celebration of Hispanic Heritage and Hope, encourages us to look forward to future contributions with optimism, hope, and a sense of community.
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we’ll focus on ways to come together to help spot, stop, and report frauds that target Latino communities. Today kicks off our month-long series with advice that we hope you’ll share with others on how to recognize and avoid scams.
The FTC Consumer Fraud Survey showed that Latinos are more likely to experience fraud than non-Hispanic whites. Over the past year, that probably means dealing with a scammer who pretended to be someone they’re not, like a government official, a known business, or a family member or friend. The top scam reported to the FTC in 2020 was impersonator scams like these, with nearly 500,000 reports and a median loss of $850.