JONESBORO, Ark. (KAIT) – Financial fraud continues to plague Arkansas residents as scammers target victims through phone calls and text messages, costing Americans over $16 billion in losses in 2024 according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Lorrie Trogden, president and CEO of the Arkansas Bankers Association, said the losses increase by double-digit percentages each year.

“They get higher and higher every year, and not by one or two percent, by double-digit percent,” Trogden said. “Despite how big those numbers are, we know those aren’t the real numbers. They’re actually much higher because people don’t report.”

Personal costs drive legislative action

Former State Representative Carlton Wing experienced the effects firsthand when his childhood Sunday school teacher fell victim to a lottery scam.

“She gets this email that says, ‘Congratulations, you’ve won the lottery and we’re going to give you $18 million for your winnings,’” Wing said. “She was so excited about that. They just said, ‘You just have to pay the taxes on the lottery and that’s how it starts.’”

Wing said repeated efforts by himself and authorities to stop his teacher were unsuccessful. The average person loses over $80,000 in scams, Wing said, though his teacher’s case involved “much, much more than that.”

The experience led Wing to help pass Act 1015 through the Arkansas legislature in 2021, designed to help financial institutions delay or stop certain attempts to scam elderly residents.

“There was really not much of a model anywhere else in the country. We were able to pull things from a few states and then apply them to Arkansas,” Wing said.

Banks face challenges stopping customer-initiated fraud

Every dollar lost to financial fraud costs a financial institution $5.75, Trogden said. Scams make up about 38% of overall fraud loss for financial institutions.

“Part of the problem is that many of these scams are customer initiated,” Trogden said. “So, they are contacted by the scammer and then they willingly, albeit they’re not just doing it, they’re being tricked into it, but they are willingly giving over their banking information or they’re going to the bitcoin machine.”

Bank employees are trained to identify signs of scams, but stopping customers remains difficult even when workers recognize fraud attempts.

“We have put every countermeasure in place that we could possibly think of but at the end of the day if the customer initiates the funds transfer, then there’s not much we can do about it,” Trogden said.

Romance scams, imposter scams, and online shopping scams are the most common scams bankers encounter. Victims typically respond the same way, Trogden said: “I thought this one was legitimate. I’m so careful. But this seemed so every day.”

Attorney general launches task force

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin launched a financial fraud task force last year after recognizing the need for better coordination with financial institutions.

“The reason we wanted to do that is we would often learn of a scam and we would find out that the banks were seeing it before we do,” Griffin said. “Why don’t we start meeting with banks so we know it ahead of time?”

Griffin said his own mother receives frequent scam attempts through texts and phone calls.

“This threat involves everybody but it’s particularly focused or troublesome for the elderly,” Griffin said.

The task force meets quarterly to share information about crimes financial institutions are seeing, giving the attorney general’s office better tools to pursue perpetrators. Griffin said his office cannot always recover victims’ money but emphasized the importance of reporting fraud.

“You’re putting it on our radar, you’re telling us what’s going on and we know what to look out for and we can warn others about it and save money as a result,” Griffin said.

Artificial intelligence presents new challenges

Trogden called artificial intelligence a “double-edged sword” in the fight against fraud.

“AI can data mine for any facts about you, any photos of you, and put together a profile that it is you trying to do these transactions or trying to do these things but then, on the flip side, banks are able to harness that same power to look for this fraud and to utilize it within their banking systems,” Trogden said.

Prevention tips for residents

Trogden offered several recommendations to protect against scams:

• Never provide information to unsolicited contacts online
• Call back using official numbers to verify legitimate requests
• Only open texts or emails from known contacts
• Establish family passwords to prevent imposter fraud
• Report suspected fraud immediately to banks before contacting law enforcement

“Do not talk to these people,” Trogden said. “They are criminals and they don’t deserve your kindness.”

She emphasized the importance of quickly reporting the fraud to their bank, even before calling law enforcement.

“Call the bank,” she said. “Because the quicker you let the bank know, there might be an opportunity to claw that money back.”

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Growing up in SEC country in the 1990s along the tomato fields of Southeast Arkansas left little room for passion toward an NFL team.

During college football season, it was all about the SEC. Being that far away from the University of Arkansas with Ole Miss, LSU, Mississippi State Alabama and even technically Vanderbilt being closer than the Razorbacks, there was the obligatory requirement to wear Arkansas gear, but a lot of people had another college team on the side.

For a lot of people in that area in those days it was often LSU or Mississippi State with an equal chance of Tennessee, Notre Dame, USC or a more local team like Northeast Louisiana (Louisiana-Monroe) or Louisiana Tech. Saturdays were for football.

The mornings were pee-wee football and the rest of the day and night were college. As for Sundays, they were for church and visiting with family.

Football wasn’t in the equation. Unless an NFL team showed up on Monday Night Football, which was the biggest game of the week in those days, it wasn’t going to be seen in most households.

Even then, the great Barry Sanders and his Detroit Lions were only going to be seen for a half no matter how close the game or how insane Sanders was playing because school came first.

It wasn’t until the playoffs that the NFL got watched in a casual fashion and that was only if it didn’t interfere with Nolan Richardson’s Razorback basketball teams.

People would pick a team to ride with, but it wasn’t serious with only one or two exceptions.

One neighbor followed the New Orleans Saints, another claimed the Chicago Bears, the other was a big enough Miami fan to know if the Dolphins won or lost each week and whether Dan Marino had a good game while his stepdad cared enough about Green Bay for it to bother him if I said something about Brett Favre throwing a pick to lose to Troy Aikman and the Cowboys.

As for me, I adopted the Buffalo Bills. For some reason I liked their colors and also several players. I was a fan of quarterback Jim Kelly, running back Thurman Thomas, receivers Andre Reed and James Lofton and monster defensive lineman Bruce Smith.

After they finished losing Super Bowl after Super Bowl, I became teamless once more and the Super Bowl became what it’s about for many Razorbacks fans — the commercials.

It was such a golden age for that because that’s when it became a true marketing focus. There was the Bud Bowl, a Super Bowl played out between bottles of Budweiser and Bud Light over multiple commercials.

We saw the arrival of the Clydesdales for the first time as one kicked a field goal and also the Budweiser frogs. There was also the great battle between Larry Bird and Michael Jordan, the Budweiser fire dog commercial, Monster.com’s “When I Grow Up” and eventually the infamous Puppy Monkey Baby.

For decades I talked and played games with friends during the game and decided whether the halftime show was worth my time, but everyone was in agreed silence when the commercials came on. Once the game was over, we all argued which were the best commercials. Were you a Terry Tate: Office Linebacker guy, or did you prefer the zebra doing instant replay to see whether a Clydesdale stepped out of bounds or perhaps the Fed Ex Castaway parody where he found out the package contained everything he needed to escape the island the whole time?

But lately some companies have begun doing their best to ruin the Super Bowl experience for people in the SEC footprint. They have started running their Super Bowl ads not only before the actual game, but weeks before the game.

It’s like telling a young boy what he is getting for Christmas over Thanksgiving dinner. It’s just not right.

This year’s greatest offender has been Pepsi. They started showing their Coca Cola polar bear rip-off ad a while ago and it’s been everywhere.

It’s like waiting for three weeks to go see a blockbuster movie with a family member and trying to avoid spoilers. Because of this treacherous behavior, I won’t be partaking in Pepsi during the Super Bowl or the months that follow.

It’s sacrilege. The logic doesn’t even make sense.

By the time the Super Bowl comes around. the ad has been out so long and seen so much that it’s no longer a Super Bowl commercial.

It’s just a basic commercial at that point. It’s not special and shouldn’t even be considered when the lists come out for Super Bowl ad rankings.

Sure, places like Arkansas don’t really matter to the NFL. It certainly doesn’t matter to the people there most of the time.

However, the one time each matter to one another is the most profitable weekend of the year for the NFL. Sure, there is little the league can do, but there needs to some sort of effort to stop practices like those used by Pepsi.

Perhaps have teams that plan to release their commercials ahead of time move down the list in priority for prime spots during the game. If they claim they won’t and do it anyway, then move them down the priority list the next year.

Just please don’t let them ruin football Christmas anymore. It’s just unAmerican.

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