Scammers target stimulus checks

Stimulus checks to help Americans weather the COVID-19 pandemic are quickly becoming a favorite target of scammers, who see the newly rolled-out funds as an easy way to profit during the ongoing crisis.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said Friday that the economic impact payments – up to $1,200 for individuals and $2,400 for married couples, along with $500 per child for those eligible – had reached over 88 million Americans during the past three weeks.

The agency has set up a website to enable Americans to claim and track their stimulus checks, and will mail or directly deposit the payments.

But the influx of funds being made available to those hurting during the economic slowdown caused by the pandemic has brought with it a wave of malicious scammers looking to cash in.

Websites impersonating banks: Many of these involve websites set up to either look like the IRS or banks, with hackers trying to trick individuals into disclosing their financial information.

IBM is among the cybersecurity and software groups tracking the spike in scams directed at gaining access to these payments, which often involve phishing emails that trick individuals into clicking on links to the fake websites.

A report released by IBM this week found a 6,000-percent increase in spam emails related to COVID-19 since early March, with many of these emails aimed at stealing the IRS checks. Examples included emails that seemed to be from Wells Fargo or American Express that prompted an individual to input login information for their accounts.

Ashkan Vila, a threat researcher with IBM X-Force, told The Hill that the efforts to impersonate financial institutions showed “additional effort” by hackers to target the relief funds.

“Before the COVID-19 pandemic, we were seeing spam campaigns that didn’t have much of a theme or focus and trying to lure as many people as possible,” Vila said. “Now, the pandemic has opened up a larger opportunity for cybercriminals to capitalize on people’s fears and uncertainty, and their desire for information on COVID-19 as things are rapidly changing.”