Money fraud often depends on speed. Your best defense is making the first few minutes slower and more deliberate.
If you feel rushed:
- stop speaking to the caller or texter
- do not buy anything
- do not transfer anything
- call a trusted person
- contact the bank, gift-card company, or wire service yourself
This lesson is not full recovery guidance. Level 3 goes further into what to do after a scam lands. Level 2 is about stopping the payment before the damage gets bigger.
A quick example: your relative is in tears because a caller told them to buy gift cards for an emergency. The most useful thing you can say is not a lecture. It is: “Stop right now. Do not buy anything. Let us call the real number together.”
What to do:
- Use a calm script: “I am not deciding this right now.”
- Call back on a trusted number you already have.
- Treat urgency plus a hard-to-reverse payment method as a near-certain scam.
This lesson is part of Spot the Scam from Lumoset Foundation, Fort Wayne, Indiana – free, always, with no account and no catch.