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![A man is on the phone with law enforcement after he's experienced a scam on his computer. An illustration of a man on the phone staring at a computer screen with an alert on it](https://aarp.widen.net/content/upq2qmubji/jpeg/robdobi_AARP_scam2.jpg?crop=true&anchor=0,0&q=80&color=ffffffff&u=mh5igy&w=2048&h=1176)
Last December, Pat Holden, 76, of El Cajon, California, received what appeared to be an email from Amazon, offering a three-month free membership to the Amazon Prime service, which provides free shipping on eligible items, among other perks.
Holden, a former official with the Better Business Bureau (BBB), normally is wary of such unsolicited pitches. But the high-quality graphics in the email looked authentic, and the offer was attractive.
![member card Image Alt Attribute](https://cdn.aarp.net/content/dam/experience-fragments/uxdia-folder-structure/en/features/membership/inline-membership-promo/default/master5/_jcr_content/root/responsivegrid/container_copy/container/articleimage.coreimg.75.1140.png/content/dam/uxdia/membership-card-d-and-t.png)
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“I had just thought about getting Prime,” Holden recalls. “So I jumped on it, which you should never do.”
She filled out and submitted the application, including her credit card number, but when she didn’t receive an email acknowledgment, she became suspicious. When she pulled up the original offer, she saw that it hadn’t come from an Amazon address.
Many of us might begin to panic, but Holden kept her cool. She called Amazon, and confirmed that the offer hadn’t come from the company. “‘You’ve been scammed,’ they told me,” Holden recalls. “ ‘Call your bank.’ And that’s exactly what I did.”
Bank officials agreed to put a hold on any suspicious transactions on her credit card.
Thanks to Holden’s immediate action, she didn’t lose any money to the criminals. Online safety and anti-scam experts wish more Americans would respond to scams just as quickly, as fraud has become an epidemic — increasingly sophisticated and financially devastating.
As soon as you realize you’ve experienced a scam, it’s crucial to take certain steps to prevent money loss and identity theft in its aftermath.
And note that at any point you can contact the free AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline, 877-908-3360, where trained fraud specialists provide support and guidance on what to do next and how to avoid scams in the future.
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