Con Watch: Election Season Is Scam Season

Steve Weisman is a lawyer, college professor, author, and one of the country’s leading experts in cybersecurity, identity theft, and scams. See Steve’s other Con Watch articles.

The much-anticipated November elections are coming soon, and interest is high in the presidential race as well as state and local contests. As always, when people are interested in something, scammers take advantage. Here are a few election-related areas where you should be wary.

PACs

A Political Action Committee (PAC) is a tax-exempt organization, not controlled by any particular candidate, that raises money to funnel to candidates and organizations trying to influence legislation. For the last ten years, scammers have been setting up phony PACs that promise to use your money on behalf of your favored candidate or cause, but instead keep the money for their own use. Scammers are calling, emailing, and texting people posing as legitimate PACs seeking contributions. Even if you are on the federal Do Not Call list, PACs are still allowed by law to contact you.

Legitimate PACs are required to file with the Federal Election Commission, so before giving to any PAC, check with the FEC to determine if the PAC has filed the necessary documents. If it isn’t registered, it’s a scam.

Unfortunately, even if you find the PAC is registered, it still may be falsifying the required financial documentation of their spending.

PACs are barred from taking donations from federal contractors or foreign nationals, which is why legitimate PACs will always inquire about your job status and citizenship. If a PAC doesn’t ask for your employment information and citizenship status, it’s a scam.

To avoid these phony organizations, limit your donations to well established PACs.

Robocalls

Scammers make robocalls in which they pose as candidates asking for donations. This particular scam can easily seem legitimate. Caller ID can be spoofed to make the call appear to come from a candidate, and recordings of the candidate can also be incorporated to make the call sound authentic. Scammers using AI can even clone the voice of a particular candidate.

As with PACs, these calls from political candidates are exempt from the federal Do Not Call list, so it’s legal for legitimate political campaigns to call you. However, the same rule applies to political calls as to every call: Never give personal or financial information to anyone over the phone whom you have not called.

If you do wish to contribute to a political campaign, go to the candidate’s official website and make your contribution. Even then, make sure that when you are giving your donation online that the website address begins with https instead of just http. The “s” at the end indicates that your communication is being encrypted for better security.

Finally, when making a donation, you should use a credit card rather than a debit card because if you are scammed, it’s easier to get your money refunded with a credit card. For this same reason, avoid using gift cards or peer-to-peer cash apps like Venmo. With these payment methods, there’s no way to recover your money once you’ve sent it.

Voter Registration

A common election-time scam involves a call purportedly from your city or town clerk informing you that you need to re-register or you will be removed from the voting lists. You are then told that you can re-register over the phone by providing some personal information, such as your Social Security number. Sometimes scammers will even ask for payment for registering by phone.

The truth is that you will never be called by your city or town clerk and told that you need to re-register. Voter registration is not done by phone, and there is no charge for registering to vote. You can register to vote or check the status of your registration at vote.gov.

Phony Polls

Political polls have been a major part of our election process for many years. Generally, people are contacted by telephone to answer questions about the candidates and their policies. Because it is so common at this time of year to be called by a political pollster, scammers will call posing as pollsters to trick their victims into providing information that can be used for purposes of identity theft. Often, they will dangle the reward of a gift card or other prize to lure people into participating in the scam poll. Again, spoofing can be used to make the call appear authentic.

Legitimate pollsters do not offer prizes or other compensation for participating in their polls. They also will never ask for personal information such as your Social Security number, credit card number, or banking information. Anyone asking for such information is a scammer. You can report scams to reportfraud.ftc.gov.