Pew: Three quarters of Americans targeted weekly in online scams
Most people receive scam calls, texts and emails at least weekly, the report said. Americans reported more than $16.6 billion in scam-related losses in 2024, the FBI said.
Many U.S. financial institutions, retail corporations and federal officials are raising the issue, warning consumers about the attacks and working to educate the public about ways to avoid them and steps to take if they fall victim.
"While Americans see older adults as more vulnerable to these crimes, significant portions of both older and younger adults have been scammed and targeted online," the report said.
Nearly half of the respondents reported that online hackers made fraudulent charges on their credit or debit cards, the most common form of attack.
More than a third reported purchasing an item online that never arrived or that was a counterfeit item for which they never received a refund.
Nearly a third said personal information was hacked through a bank, social media, email or bank account, and a quarter of respondents said they received a scam text message or phone call that resulted in them providing personal information to a scammer.
People between 18 and 29 were the most frequent victims of the scams, the report continued.
Pew polled 9,397 adults between April 14 and 20.
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33 minutes ago
Brutal arrest of Black student in Florida shows benefits of recording police from new vantage point
A video that captured the brutal arrest of a Black college student pulled from his car and beaten by officers in Florida has led to an investigation and calls for motorists to consider protecting themselves by placing a camera inside their vehicles. William McNeil Jr. captured his February traffic stop on his cellphone camera, which was mounted above his dashboard. It offered a unique view, providing the only clear footage of the violence by officers, including punches to his head that can't clearly be seen in officer body camera footage released by the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. Since McNeil had the foresight to record the encounter from inside the vehicle, 'we got to see firsthand and hear firsthand and put it all in context what driving while Black is in America,' said civil rights attorney Ben Crump, one of several lawyers advising McNeil. 'All the young people should be recording these interactions with law enforcement," Crump said. Because what it tells us, just like with George Floyd, if we don't record the video, we can see what they put in the police report with George Floyd before they realized the video existed.' McNeil was pulled over that day because officers said his headlights should have been on due to bad weather, his lawyers said. His camera shows him asking the officers what he did wrong. Seconds later, an officer smashes his window, strikes him as he sat in the driver's seat and then pulls him from the car and punches him in the head. After being knocked to the ground, McNeil was punched six more times in his right thigh, a police report states. The incident reports don't describe the officer punching McNeil in the head. The officer, who pulled McNeil over and then struck him, described the force this way in his report: 'Physical force was applied to the suspect and he was taken to the ground.' But after McNeil posted his video online last month and it went viral, the sheriff's office launched an internal investigation, which is ongoing. A sheriff's office spokesperson declined to comment about the case this week, citing pending litigation, though no lawsuit has been filed over the arrest. McNeil said the ordeal left him traumatized, with a brain injury, a broken tooth and several stiches in his lip. His attorneys accused the sheriff's office of trying to cover up what really happened. 'On Feb. 19, 2025, Americans saw what America is,' said another of McNeil's lawyers, Harry Daniels. 'We saw injustice. You saw abuse of police power. But most importantly we saw a young man that had a temperament to control himself in the face of brutality.' The traffic stop, he said, was not only racially motivated but 'it was unlawful, and everything that stemmed from that stop was unlawful." McNeil is hardly the first Black motorist to record video during a traffic stop that turned violent — Philando Castile's girlfriend livestreamed the bloody aftermath of his death during a 2016 traffic stop near Minneapolis. But McNeil's arrest serves as a reminder of how cellphone video can show a different version of events than what is described in police reports, his lawyers said. Christopher Mercado, who retired as a lieutenant from the New York Police Department, agreed with McNeil's legal team's suggestion that drivers should record their police interactions and that a camera mounted inside a driver's car could offer a unique point of view. "Use technology to your advantage," said Mercado, an adjunct assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. 'There's nothing nefarious about it. It's actually a smart thing in my opinion.' Rod Brunson, chairman of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, said he thinks it's a good idea for citizens to film encounters with police — as long as doing so doesn't make the situation worse. 'I think that's a form of protection — it's safeguarding them against false claims of criminal behavior or interfering with officers, etc.,' Brunson said. Although the sheriff's office declined to speak to The Associated Press this week, Sheriff T.K. Waters has spoken publicly about McNeil's arrest since video of the encounter went viral. He pushed back against some of the allegations made by McNeil's lawyers, noting that McNeil was told more than a half-dozen times to exit the vehicle. At a news conference last month, Waters also highlighted images of a knife in McNeil's car. The officer who punched him claimed in his police report that McNeil reached toward the floor of the car, where deputies later found the knife. Crump, though, said McNeil's video shows that he 'never reaches for anything,' and a second officer wrote in his report that McNeil kept his hands up as the other officer smashed the car window. A camera inside a motorist's vehicle could make up for some shortcomings of police bodycams, which can have a narrow field of view that becomes more limited the closer an officer gets to the person being filmed, Mercado said. However, after the police murder of Floyd, some states and cities debated how and when citizens should be able to capture video of police. The Constitution guarantees the right to record police in public, but a point of contention in some states has been whether a civilian's recording might interfere with the ability of officers to do their job. In Louisiana, for example, a new law makes it a crime to approach within 25 feet (7.6 meters) of a police officer in certain situations. Waters acknowledged those limitations at a news conference last year, as he narrated video of a wild brawl between officers and a fan in the stands at EverBank Stadium during a football game last year between the universities of Georgia and Florida. The sheriff showed the officers' bodycam videos during the start of the confrontation near the top of the stadium. But when the officers subdued the suspect and were pressing against him, the bodycam footage didn't capture much, so the sheriff switched to stadium security video shot from a longer distance away. In McNeil's case, the bodycam video didn't clearly capture the punches thrown. If it had, the case would have been investigated right away, the sheriff said. For the past 20 years, Brunson has been interviewing young Black men in several U.S. cities about their encounters with law enforcement. When he first began submitting research papers for academic review, many readers didn't believe the men's stories of being brutalized by officers. 'People who live in a civil society don't expect to be treated this way by the police. For them, their police interactions are mostly pleasant, mostly cordial," Brunson said. 'So it's hard for people who don't have a tenuous relationship with the police to fathom that something like this happens,' he said. "And that's where video does play a big part because people can't deny what they see.'
New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
McCloskeys win back AR-15 rifle 5 years after Black Lives Matter protest confrontation
The St. Louis couple who went viral in 2020 for wielding guns as Black Lives Matter protesters marched outside their property have regained possession of their semiautomatic rifle. After a years long and complex legal struggle to reclaim their weapons after they were seized by authorities more than five years ago, police have returned the AR-15 to St. Louis lawyers Mark and Patricia McCloskey. Advertisement 'It only took 3 lawsuits, 2 trips to the Court of Appeals and 1,847 days, but I got my AR15 back!' Mark McCloskey posted to his X account on Friday, along with several photos of him carrying the gun. 'We defended our home, were persecuted by the left, smeared by the press, and threatened with death, but we never backed down.' In a separate X post, Mark McCloskey also shared a video of himself retrieving the rifle from a police station. 'That gun may have only been worth $1,500 or something, and it cost me a lot of time and a lot of effort to get it back, but you have to do that,' Mark McCloskey told Fox News Digital, adding he owns other weapons. 'You have to let them know that you will never back down, you'll never give up.' Advertisement 3 Mark McCloskey was given his AR-15 back FOX News He said he expects their pistol, wielded by Patricia McCloskey during the confrontation, to be returned by next week. The AR-15 ended up in the possession of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, while the pistol wound up in the possession of the St. Louis Sheriff's Department, he added. 'Each and every one of us owns a personal responsibility for our freedom and our democratic republic,' Mark McCloskey said. Advertisement In June 2020, a video of the gun-toting McCloskeys took the internet by storm after a swarm of Black Lives Matter protesters broke down an iron gate and ignored a 'No Trespassing' sign on their private street. 3 The couple went viral in 2020 for wielding guns as Black Lives Matter protesters marched outside their property. UPI 3 Their weapons were seized by authorities five years ago. UPI The couple, who said they felt threatened, armed themselves before heading outside to ward off the crowd, which was on its way to the former mayor's home. No one was hurt. Advertisement After the incident, the McCloskeys's were were seized by law enforcement, and they were charged with unlawful use of a weapon by St. Louis' former Democratic prosecutor, Kim Gardner. Shortly after that, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt moved to dismiss charges brought by Gardner. In 2021, the McCloskeys pleaded guilty to misdemeanor fourth-degree assault and second-degree harassment but later were granted a pardon by former Missouri Gov. Mike Parson. Last month, a Missouri appeals court confirmed the expungement of the McCloskeys' misdemeanor convictions, which, under state law, means it is as though the incident never happened, Mark McCloskey said. 'If you've been wronged, if you've been overreached by the leftist government — you can't give up,' Mark McCloskey told Fox News Digital. 'You can't let them get an inch.' The St. Louis Sheriff's Office and the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Brutal arrest of Black student in Florida shows benefits of recording police from new vantage point
Advertisement 'All the young people should be recording these interactions with law enforcement,' Crump said. Because what it tells us, just like with George Floyd, if we don't record the video, we can see what they put in the police report with George Floyd before they realized the video existed.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up McNeil was pulled over that day because officers said his headlights should have been on due to bad weather, his lawyers said. His camera shows him asking the officers what he did wrong. Seconds later, an officer smashes his window, strikes him as he sat in the driver's seat and then pulls him from the car and punches him in the head. After being knocked to the ground, McNeil was punched six more times in his right thigh, a police report states. Advertisement The incident reports don't describe the officer punching McNeil in the head. The officer, who pulled McNeil over and then struck him, described the force this way in his report: 'Physical force was applied to the suspect and he was taken to the ground.' But after McNeil posted his video online last month and it went viral, the sheriff's office launched an internal investigation, which is ongoing. A sheriff's office spokesperson declined to comment about the case this week, citing pending litigation, though no lawsuit has been filed over the arrest. McNeil said the ordeal left him traumatized, with a brain injury, a broken tooth and several stiches in his lip. His attorneys accused the sheriff's office of trying to cover up what really happened. 'On Feb. 19, 2025, Americans saw what America is,' said another of McNeil's lawyers, Harry Daniels. 'We saw injustice. You saw abuse of police power. But most importantly we saw a young man that had a temperament to control himself in the face of brutality.' The traffic stop, he said, was not only racially motivated but 'it was unlawful, and everything that stemmed from that stop was unlawful.' McNeil is hardly the first Black motorist to record video during a traffic stop that turned violent — Philando Castile's girlfriend livestreamed the bloody aftermath of his death during a 2016 traffic stop near Minneapolis. But McNeil's arrest serves as a reminder of how cellphone video can show a different version of events than what is described in police reports, his lawyers said. Christopher Mercado, who retired as a lieutenant from the New York Police Department, agreed with McNeil's legal team's suggestion that drivers should record their police interactions and that a camera mounted inside a driver's car could offer a unique point of view. Advertisement 'Use technology to your advantage,' said Mercado, an adjunct assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. 'There's nothing nefarious about it. It's actually a smart thing in my opinion.' Rod Brunson, chairman of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, said he thinks it's a good idea for citizens to film encounters with police — as long as doing so doesn't make the situation worse. 'I think that's a form of protection — it's safeguarding them against false claims of criminal behavior or interfering with officers, etc.,' Brunson said. Although the sheriff's office declined to speak to The Associated Press this week, Sheriff T.K. Waters has spoken publicly about McNeil's arrest since video of the encounter went viral. He pushed back against some of the allegations made by McNeil's lawyers, noting that McNeil was told more than a half-dozen times to exit the vehicle. At a news conference last month, Waters also highlighted images of a knife in McNeil's car. The officer who punched him claimed in his police report that McNeil reached toward the floor of the car, where deputies later found the knife. Crump, though, said McNeil's video shows that he 'never reaches for anything,' and a second officer wrote in his report that McNeil kept his hands up as the other officer smashed the car window. A camera inside a motorist's vehicle could make up for some shortcomings of police bodycams, which can have a narrow field of view that becomes more limited the closer an officer gets to the person being filmed, Mercado said. Advertisement However, after the police murder of Floyd, some states and cities debated how and when citizens should be able to capture video of police. The Constitution guarantees the right to record police in public, but a point of contention in some states has been whether a civilian's recording might interfere with the ability of officers to do their job. In Louisiana, for example, a new law makes it a crime to approach within 25 feet (7.6 meters) of a police officer in certain situations. Waters acknowledged those limitations at a news conference last year, as he narrated video of a wild brawl between officers and a fan in the stands at EverBank Stadium during a football game last year between the universities of Georgia and Florida. The sheriff showed the officers' bodycam videos during the start of the confrontation near the top of the stadium. But when the officers subdued the suspect and were pressing against him, the bodycam footage didn't capture much, so the sheriff switched to stadium security video shot from a longer distance away. In McNeil's case, the bodycam video didn't clearly capture the punches thrown. If it had, the case would have been investigated right away, the sheriff said. For the past 20 years, Brunson has been interviewing young Black men in several U.S. cities about their encounters with law enforcement. When he first began submitting research papers for academic review, many readers didn't believe the men's stories of being brutalized by officers. 'People who live in a civil society don't expect to be treated this way by the police. For them, their police interactions are mostly pleasant, mostly cordial,' Brunson said. Advertisement 'So it's hard for people who don't have a tenuous relationship with the police to fathom that something like this happens,' he said. 'And that's where video does play a big part because people can't deny what they see.'
