(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Insurance Division, Attorney General’s office and A-A-R-P Iowa are once against holding a “Stop the Scammers” tour across the state. Iowa Insurance Commissioner Doug Ommen says scammers haven’t let up in trying to take your money. “They use a lot of common themes, but what is so different now is the accessibility that they have through telephones through cell phones, as well as electronic media, social media to get access to people,” Ommen says. He says scammers can be doing business from around the world, and that makes investigation and prosecution very difficult.
Ommen says the tour is intended to educate people on how the scams work. “Scammers, they invest a lot of time developing relationships, and then the scam is of sort of like a buffet line, it’ll move through different things. Sometimes it’ll be investment related. Sometimes it’ll involve, basically bailing out a friend who’s having financial difficulties. Sometimes it’s getting access to monies,” he says.
Ommen says scams can be targeted at anyone, and even the smartest people can be pulled in. “They gain your confidence by developing a relationship. And again, in today’s technology, folks have this sense that they’re in a communication relationship with someone that can be trusted,” Ommen says. He says they’ve made some progress in preventing people from being taken by scammers.
“We’ve actually intercepted a substantial amount of money, two-point-seven million we’ve documented that we’ve intercepted from people who actually just attended these events,” he says. But Ommen says it’s a huge problem as the Consumer Federation of America estimates that Americans lost more then 119 billion dollars to scammers in 2025.
