The coronavirus pandemic has unleashed a new wave of fraud

Criminals are getting busy — and creative — with an onslaught of new frauds preying on people's fears and anxieties about the coronavirus pandemic.

The big picture: Desperate people are finding their unemployment checks and stimulus payments stolen. They're also being bombarded with offers for fake cures, fake work-at-home offers and messages asking for personal financial information.

In perhaps the most widespread scam, criminals are filing fake unemployment claims on behalf of real people who haven't lost their jobs, hitting one state after another.
The rush to get relief money in people's hands has introduced new vulnerabilities to unemployment systems — state agencies and corporate human-resources departments alike are quick to approve claims without requiring much proof.
A Nigerian crime ring called "Scattered Canary" may be responsible for a lot of this fraud, which is made more attractive by the extra $600 a week in unemployment benefits Congress enacted.
Washington state — an early locus of coronavirus in the U.S. — seems to have been hit hardest, with hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits siphoned off, per the Seattle Times.

Where it stands: The Federal Trade Commission says consumers have reported about $50 million in losses to the agency.
TransUnion, the credit bureau, runs a weekly survey that shows that 29% of consumers say they've been targets of digital fraud related to COVID-19.

"Some of the really pernicious stuff that we were seeing were about people ordering P.P.E.-type materials — face masks, hand sanitizer — and then it never arrives," Monica Vaca of the FTC tells Axios.

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