The coronavirus pandemic has created a perfect storm for scammers seeking to defraud panicked, isolated and emotionally vulnerable targets, experts say. “I think we are in for a wild ride,” said Frank McKenna, an anti-fraud expert who has studied organized fraud networks in Canada and the United States. “We have this unprecedented global fear and panic.
I’ve never seen an environment quite as ripe for fraud as now.” The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a dramatic rise in unemployment and financial stress, which is an optimal market disruption for scammers to exploit, according to McKenna.
Meanwhile, most of the world has been put into physical isolation — creating a divide-and-conquer environment that predators thrive in.