How to Report Fraud at ReportFraud.ftc.gov

Hi, I’m Rosario Mendez, an attorney at the Federal Trade Commission. And today I’m going to tell you how to report scams at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. But first, let me tell you why it’s so important to report frauds and scams.

Every time you file a report with the Federal Trade Commission you are helping us build cases, stop scammers, and also alert others about the current trends.

And now it's a lot easier to report fraud at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

The first thing that you do to report a scam or a bad business practice is go to the website, ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and you click on the “Report Now” button.

The site will ask you a few questions, like, “Is your report about any of these common problems?” That’s to narrow down what your report is about. You can report any scam, fraud or bad business practice you’ve spotted.

Today I’m going to report an impersonator scam. In my case it was a tech support scam. So I’ll first select “an impersonator” and then I’ll click that somebody was pretending to be a “well-known or trusted business.” And then I'll click “continue.” And then I'll just fill out a few more details.

Did the company offer tech support services, - yes.

Did you send the scammer payment of any kind? - yes.

How much money did you pay the scammer in total – I'm going to say 99 dollars.

How did you pay or send the money? – credit card. Was it an automatic recurring charge or subscription? - no.

When did you most recently pay or send money? I'm going to say, August 10th.

How did you first hear about it? I'm going to say website.

Name of the company: I'm going to make up a company.

Name of the person: If you talked to anybody, put name there.

Describe what happened: This is the opportunity to put in your own words, what happened to you.

Press continue again.

Now, I’m going to enter my contact information. That way I can help if someone needs more information about what happened. But you can give as much or as little information as you’d like.

Your name, address, phone number, and then hit submit.

You’ll get your report number and also tips on what to do next. If you gave us an email, you will get an email with this information, as well.

And that’s it. That’s how easy it is to report fraud. Scammers don’t just scam one person, so if you detect a scam, help your community, help protect your friends, your family, by reporting it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

Thanks for watching – and thanks for reporting fraud.