GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — The deadline has been extended for scam victims to apply to get some of their lost money back.
The offer is part of a $586 million settlement between the Federal Trade Commission and Western Union. The original deadline to file a claim was Feb. 12, but it was extended late Thursday afternoon to May 31.
THE SETTLEMENT
One of the jobs of the FTC is to investigate frauds and scams. Examples include fake sweepstakes or lotteries and calls claiming to be a family member in trouble with the law and in need of money.
“We started to notice that a lot of these scams were using Western Union in order to get the victims to pay,” Jon Miller Steiger, director of the FTC’s East Central Region office, said.
“The more we looked, the more we saw that Western Union was involved and actually they knew what was going on,” he added. “Over 10 years, Western Union has received over 500,000 complaints from victims of scams, saying that they were sending money using Western Union to the scammers.”
The FTC also says Western Union failed to take action when its own employees became involved in the schemes.
“A lot of their agents were actually involved in some of the scams and that Western Union as a company knew that. They knew that the money was being picked up by some of their agents and actually being turned directly over to scammers,” Steiger said. “It wasn’t just that they were a conduit. They were knowing participants in some of these scams.”
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