Business
Column: It's the season for scams, so here's a piece of advice: Never do business with strangers
The text arrived midday, saying a delivery to me was on hold. To fix the problem, all I had to do was click on a web link and enter my ZIP Code.
“Have a great day from the USPS team!” the text said.
The awkwardly worded message (with bad punctuation and an international phone number) was clearly not from the Postal Service. And if I can hazard a wild guess, I don’t think the senders really wanted me to have a great day.
They wanted to rip me off and, so, a word to the wise this holiday season:
Watch your wallet.
California is about to be hit by an aging population wave, and Steve Lopez is riding it. His column focuses on the blessings and burdens of advancing age — and how some folks are challenging the stigma associated with older adults.
Fraud is a year-round, multibillion-dollar international enterprise. But for thieves, the season of joy is a wide-open window of opportunity, as AARP warned Nov. 18:
“With scammers looking to take advantage of consumers from all angles, new AARP survey research reveals that people need to be vigilant this holiday season as they buy gifts, book their travel arrangements, and donate to charities.”
Many of the scams are run by sophisticated international syndicates, said Kathy Stokes, director of fraud prevention at AARP’s Fraud Watch Network. Those crooks are working every channel, fishing for victims by email, phone calls, texts, fliers and regular mail.
Unwitting people are forking over money via gift cards, cryptocurrency, credit cards, cash and wire transfers. Losses often are virtually impossible to recover because the money is on foreign soil before the victims know they’ve been robbed.
Stokes said that in one common ripoff, thieves are going after people who own timeshares they’re trying to dump.
“There’s all this paperwork that makes it look legitimate, like you’re paying to get out of the timeshare,” Stokes said. But the crooks are pocketing thousands of dollars while the target is still stuck with the timeshare.
Last week, in a national conference on scams targeting older adults, Deborah Royster of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warned that consumers are being wiped out in a flash.
“Retirement savings and other resources that people have earned over a lifetime, and depend on,” Royster said, “can be gone in an instant.”
In that same conference, Virginia lawyer Julie M. Strandlie said her 85-year-old mother lost $80,000 between Thanksgiving and Christmas five years ago in a common scam that began with “flashing graphics and pounding voices” on her computer screen, warning of a virus.
“There’s a number to call for help, but it’s not the real Microsoft,” Strandlie said.
Her mother fell for the ruse, giving the criminals remote access to unlock her frozen computer. She was then duped into believing they had deposited money into her account, and she needed to pay it back in cash and gift cards from Best Buy and Target.
As LAPD Lead Officer Carlos Diaz, left, looks on, LAPD Det. Albert Smith leaves his card with Marta Barillas after a presentation about financial scams and physical abuse against seniors at St. Barnabas Senior Services in Los Angeles in June 2023.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Steve McFarland, president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau region that runs from Palo Alto to Long Beach, said his office is getting 1,100 consumer complaints of all types each and every day.
He wasn’t kidding and repeated the number.
McFarland and other sources say a greater percentage of millennials report fraud than do older adults, but the latter group suffers greater losses. And across the age spectrum, McFarland said, gift card scams are hot right now.
Bar codes on those cards can be tampered with or photographed by someone before they’re sold, McFarland said. The buyer of the card goes to a checkout stand and puts, let’s say, $100 on the card to be redeemed at Target, Burger King or any number of establishments.
But when the recipient goes to redeem it, the funds are gone. It happened last year to L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who bought a $100 VISA gift card for a nephew who found that it wasn’t worth a nickel. Hahn later warned of the scam, along with McFarland, on L.A.’s Eyewitness News.
“It’s called gift card draining and these scammers have found several slick ways to victimize unsuspecting shoppers,” Hahn said.
In addition to outright scams, this is a time of year when solicitations for charitable donations can fill your mailbox.
“A lot of charities are trying to close out strong, and criminals know that and are vying for the same dollars,” Stokes said.
If it’s not an established organization that’s known for its good work, Stokes advised going to the Better Business Bureau’s give.org website, where you can type in the name of the charity to find out whether it’s legit. You can also find out what percentage of donations go to the cause versus overhead costs.
Your best policy, unfortunately, is to be suspicious of everything. I recently got a letter with my mortgage lender’s name in the window and opened it to find a warning that this was my “FINAL NOTICE” to avoid a monthly payment increase.
It looked hinky, and on the back page, in fine print, I learned that the mail was from a lender unaffiliated with my mortgage company.
If you see “final notice,” “urgent” or “benefit disbursement enclosed,” don’t even bother opening the envelope.
A friend shared a tall stack of mail that keeps coming for his mother, who died months ago, and as I sifted through it I found one attempt after another to separate her from her money. “Copy of Final Check Enclosed,” said one, and in the cellophane window was what looked like a check for $437.18 that said “Pay to the order of …”
But it wasn’t a check, of course. It was a solicitation from a lobbying firm claiming it will fight to preserve Social Security funding (and by the way, she had a lot of mail from organizations claiming they were out to do the same).
The fake check was described as an example of what she stood to lose if she didn’t immediately support the cause by pulling out her credit card and making an “urgent donation” to keep Social Security solvent.
And then there were solicitations from organizations representing a Noah’s Ark of endangered animals. Look, I’m an animal lover, but how does one begin to sort through all the pleas?
Save the pigs. The horses. The bees. The lions. The donkeys.
“Sunday, a baby donkey was ripped from his mother and brutalized,” said one envelope.
Lots of appeals for dogs, too. One included the photo of a dog with amazing verbal skills, judging by the quote attributed to the canine: “I wish for no one else to be hurt the way humans have hurt me.”
I feel for the dog, but if he can actually speak, let’s get him an agent and send him out on tour so the pup can raise a fortune for his cause.
Of course, there are plenty of good charities out there that are worthy of your generosity, but be careful.
With solicitations. With email. With texts. With phone calls.
All of it.
Banks should be doing more to prevent repeated, questionable, out-of-the-ordinary withdrawals and wire transfers. The gift card industry ought to be able to rein in rampant fraud with smarter security measures.
And people of all ages need to be more discerning, refuse to provide personal information such as Social Security numbers, and get some advice from a trusted friend or loved one before signing any checks or doing business with strangers.
Last year I wrote about two retired L.A. residents, a former teacher and a former banker, who were swindled out of roughly $80,000 apiece in internet scams. Earlier this year I wrote about a Redwood City woman who was taken for $1.8 million, and an Alhambra woman, Alice Lin, who lost $720,000 in an “investment” scheme introduced to her by a man she met on a chat app.
I reached out to Lin, who had some good advice on all forms of communication from sources you don’t know or trust.
“Do not respond,” Lin said. “Don’t touch it.”
steve.lopez@latimes.com
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
-
News28 minutes agoAfter 2 failed votes, Mike Johnson unveils new plan to extend key U.S. spy powers
-
New York2 hours agoShould a Straight Person Represent Stonewall’s City Council District?
-
Detroit, MI2 hours agoBlake Miller has high floor, big upside, says Lions GM Brad Holmes
-
San Francisco, CA3 hours agoHighway 1 closure in San Francisco expected to snarl Sunset traffic all weekend
-
Dallas, TX3 hours agoHow UCF EDGE Malachi Lawrence Fits With The Dallas Cowboys
-
Miami, FL3 hours ago
Dolphins Select Two Players in The First Round of The 2026 NFL Draft
-
Boston, MA3 hours agoIn-Store Only
-
Denver, CO3 hours agoWolves Back Up the Big Talk With Blowout Win Over Denver in Game 3