Stories and alerts
Going around
What is circulating now, stories that show how these work on real families, and the occasional save, where somebody checked and it mattered. Newest first. Forward the page to whoever in your family gets these messages.
Going aroundFTC alert, May 2026
The party invitation that steals your email
An invitation arrives from a friend's real email account, because that account was already hacked. The date and place are missing. To see them you have to sign in, and the sign in page, dressed up as Google or Microsoft, takes your email password. Then your mailbox sends the same invitation to everyone in your contacts, and whoever holds your mailbox can reset your bank password from inside it.
Read: Cofense, how the Punchbowl campaign works ยท Consumer Rescue, walking through one invitation. This is Session 2 of the night.
StoryArizona, told to the US Senate
"Mom, these bad men have me"
Jennifer DeStefano got a call from an unknown number. Her 15 year old daughter's voice was on it, sobbing, begging for help. A man took the phone and demanded a ransom, first a million dollars, then $50,000. Her daughter was safe on a ski trip the whole time. The voice was a clone. DeStefano told the Senate she will never get that voice out of her head, and she believed it completely until she heard her actual daughter speak.
Read: Gizmodo on her testimony. The code word exists because of calls like this one.
From the kitScenario S4-7
The Directory Harvest
This one is a scenario from our own kit, built out of pieces that are each real. A link goes around the chats: the new community directory, confirm your listing. The form asks for your name, address, phone, email, and the names of your children and where they go to school. Some of it is already filled in, which makes it feel official. Every confirmed listing would hand a scammer a better script: your name, your kids' names, their school, your number. That is the raw material for the call in the card above this one.
It is scenario S4-7 in Session 4 of the kit. Rule of thumb if the real version ever shows up: a directory that needs your children's details confirmed by tonight does not exist.
A saveBank branches, 2026
The teller who asked one more question
The American Bankers Association collects these: customers at the window, already convinced, about to hand over $9,700, $38,000, in one case $260,000. A teller asked what the money was for, slowly, and the story fell apart. By then the customer had believed everything. The save happened at the last possible minute because one person in the chain was willing to be a little annoying.
Read: ABA's Scam Slayer stories, 2026 relaunch. Being the person who asks is a job anyone in a family can take.
ElsewhereNew Hyde Park, NY, Sept 2026
A Jewish institute ran this workshop
The Parker Jewish Institute hosted "Shielding Seniors," a free session on scams and identity theft: the grandchild in crisis call, voice spoofing named out loud, Medicare fraud, what to do if you think you were targeted. It was funded by a foundation grant. This is not a new idea we are pushing uphill. Jewish organizations are already doing it.
Read: Parker Jewish Institute, program summary (PDF).
ElsewhereCleveland, Nov 16, 2026
The federation brought in the FBI
The Jewish Federation of Cleveland runs an evening of community security training on financial fraud, led by the FBI, aimed at older adults and their families. Fraud now sits on the same agenda as building security. If your community has a federation or a JCC, there is a decent chance somebody there is already worried about this and looking for material.
Read: the event listing. Our kit is free for any community that wants to run its own version.