BURLINGTON — During the past year in Wisconsin, complaints to the Federal Trade Commission went from several hundred a month to a peak of 56,000 complaints in March 2021. The top complaint involved fraud, most often related to online shopping, followed by complaints about credit bureaus and financial services. Identity theft was the third most common complaint in Wisconsin.

Reports of fraud have increased as scammers use the pandemic to come up with new ways to trick people into sharing their financial information. COVID-19 related fraud includes claiming unemployment benefits using someone else’s work history, pretending to be a virus contact tracer, claiming to conduct a vaccine survey and selling unproven remedies to the coronavirus. These pandemic-related scams are in addition to already existing scams, such as threatening someone with arrest by saying they owe taxes or demanding payment on an overdue loan through a wire transfer or paying the…

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