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AARP Michigan has joined in a national effort urging consumers to better protect themselves from a variety of scams, led by those involving identity theft.
The concern follows a new report showing Michigan ranked 6th nationally in identity theft complaints for 2014, while ID theft was third in scam complaints in the state last year behind debt collection and telephone and mobile services, based on a new report from the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book.
It’s the 15th consecutive year that ID Theft led in complaints nationwide, with 10,338 in Michigan — or 104 per 100,000 in population.
The national report also found that Social Security, Medicare and other government benefits fraud accounted for more than one in three reports of identity theft, followed by fraudulent use of credit cards and phone or utilities fraud. Stealing money from bank accounts accounted for 8% of complaints.
Nationally, people in their 40’s and 50’s filed the most complaints – 19% – while 18% of complaints were made by those in both their 20’s and 30’s. People age 60 and older filed 13% of complaints and people age 70 and older only filed 7% of complaints.
Rounding out the top ten scams in Michigan last year were scams involving sweepstakes and lotteries, auto-related complaints, shop-at-home and catalog sales, TV and electronic media and internet services.
AARP urges consumers to check with their Fraud Watch Network to help prevent such scams.
