Online scams follow the money. Here’s how to check before you pay

A scam doesn’t need to hack anything. It needs you to believe a story for about four minutes. The story might be a shop selling a $300 jacket for $49, a caller from “your bank’s fraud team” who already knows your last four digits, or a refund that can only be processed if you install remote-access software.

This section tracks the scams that are actually circulating and explains how each one works at a high level, without the playbook. We look at shopping fraud, impersonation calls, fake tech support, investment and romance cons, and the scams that target small businesses, like invoice fraud and fake directory listings. Where there’s a local angle, from Myrtle Beach rental scams to fake toll-payment texts, we name it.

Every scam briefing ends with the same thing: the one check that would have stopped it, and who to report it to in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Coming up: a beginner’s guide to spotting online scams, and the payment methods that are hardest to claw back.