I just finished speaking with the manager of one of the resident owned communities in our area.
An email was received at the community’s email address, allegedly from the Federal Trade Commission. The subject of the email was “NOTIFICATION OF CONSUMER COMPLAINT” and the email contained a very official looking document advising that a customer had complained “about your business and believes you have contravened the Consumer Credit Protection Act (CCPA)”.
The document further stated that “Federal Trade Commission has initiated a formal investigation into this complaint” and asked the association to “consider the details of the enclosed letter“–which conveniently did not accompany the email. Instead, the document advised the association that the letter (which contained the complaint) could be downloaded from a website listed in the document.
The document advised the association that it was “welcome to contact us regarding this matter” using a form that could be downloaded from another website address.
The document closed with the address of the FTC and its website and warned the association that “the FTC is required to post information about businesses who fail to respond to consumer complaints”.
Our firm’s technology professional quickly determined that the email was yet another scam and located this link that describes the scam in detail.
You’ll note that the Federal Trade Commission advises the recipients of this scam that they should not click on the links to the websites listed in the email.
Managers and board members of resident owned communities should always be alert for these scams and use common sense–after all, it’s doubtful that, even in this day and age, any agency of the federal government would choose email to notify a business of a consumer complaint.
Our best wishes for a happy and healthy holiday weekend.