Just a few months ago, I wrote a blog post on common identity theft and financial scams. Little did I know that my elderly dad was at the time about to be tricked by a fraudster. Here’s what happened:

A scammer claiming to be a case agent from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) called my dad and said that fraudsters had hacked into my dad’s brokerage account held at a big financial services company. The scammer said he was investigating the incident and needed my dad’s cooperation to catch them. The scammer said that my dad needed to install software on his laptop, which the FTC would use to catch the fraudsters. He then sent my dad an email with a case number, some background information on the investigation, and the link to the software that needed to be installed. Finally, he said that the investigation was confidential and that my dad couldn’t tell anyone about it.

That phone conversation and an official-looking email was all it took to convince my dad to install the software and keep the whole situation to himself. When I visited him a week later, he let a few details slip and, after some prodding, told me the whole story. Immediately, I knew it was a scam. There were so many red flags:

1. The email address looked suspicious. It didn’t end in @ftc.gov, as you would expect for a FTC email address. It ended in @mail.ftc.net.
2. It didn’t make any sense for my dad to have to install software. I’m certain that the software was malware, in this case most likely a keystroke logger that would track my dad’s username and password as he logged into his financial accounts.
3. Not being allowed to tell anyone about the investigation seemed like the perfect way to ensure the scam would work. If my dad had kept the secret for longer, he eventually would’ve logged into his financial accounts, and the scammer would then have used his credentials to steal his money.

Right away, I had my dad delete the software. He then called his brokerage company and put a lock on his account, which I described in this blog post on how to protect yourself from identity theft and fraud. His brokerage company confirmed that no one had withdrawn any money from his account, thank goodness. He also called his local bank, where he has a checking account, to make sure nothing had been stolen there either. The bank actually froze his online credentials so no one, including him, can log in. They will unfreeze them after he goes to Best Buy to get his laptop’s memory wiped and provides the bank with confirmation this has been done.

The moral of this story is that even though I had warned my dad about identity theft and financial fraud and told him what to watch out for, he still fell for it. He was extremely lucky that he didn’t lose any money. There are so many of these scammers out there, and they are relentless, always trying new tactics. Be vigilant and report all scams to the Internet Crime Complaint Center.