Watch out for these coronavirus stimulus check scams

Shameless scammers will try to steal coronavirus stimulus checks, according to federal officials, who say common sense precautions can stop them in their tracks.

Officials say con artists will try a wide range of schemes to bilk Americans out of the $1,200 payments the Trump administration has started delivering to help people shore up their pocketbooks during the pandemic.

“Scammers have no shame, and nothing — not even a global health crisis — is off limits,” Karen Hobbs, assistant director at the Federal Trade Commission’s Division of Consumer and Business Education, said in a recent blog post.

Taxpayers should look out for fishy checks, sketchy phone calls and people claiming they can speed up the process of getting a payment, federal officials say. Those scams should raise red flags because many Americans won’t have to take any action to get the money they’re entitled to under the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill Congress passed last month.

Some hustlers may mail out fake checks and ask the recipient to “verify” information online or make a phone call in order to cash it, the Internal Revenue Service has warned. Or they could send checks for too much money, then ask the recipient to keep what they’re owed and return the difference in cash, gift cards or money transfers, according to Hobbs.

The US Treasury Department has said it won’t start distributing the real paper stimulus checks until later this month, so any purported government payment that came in the mail before then is likely bogus. And millions of taxpayers have already had payments deposited directly in their bank accounts.

Scammers may also ask people to verify their personal or banking information online or over the phone in order to receive the stimulus money, officials say. The IRS will not reach out to people to collect those details, according to the feds.

The IRS also says Americans should be wary of any pitches using the terms “stimulus check” or “stimulus payment,” as the cash infusion is officially called an “economic impact payment.”

Taxpayers can find official information about the stimulus payments submit a complaint to the FTC.