CLEVELAND, Ohio — If you want to stay out of the tangled web of lies scammers weave, I've said it many times before: don't answer calls from numbers you don't recognize.
However, if you do pick up, you may be speaking with someone posing as a special investigator from your insurance company.
"So, what they're trying to do is they're trying to elicit personal health information," said Jeff Dressler, Special Agent, Cleveland FBI.
The Cleveland office of the FBI gave me a tip about an increase in cold calls focused on healthcare fraud.
Complaints about the scam have been emerging on the Internet Crime Complaint Center, also known as IC3.gov.
Dressler told me we all pay higher premiums and healthcare costs when Medicare, Medicaid or private insurance information gets into the wrong hands.
"They could either use that for their own personal benefit, billing the healthcare system, or they could aggregate all this information and sell the list to another person who's going to scam the healthcare fraud system," said Dressler.
Insurance companies do have special investigative units that flag fraudulent claims, so if you get a call like this, do not give them any information.
Instead, hang up and get in touch with your provider directly using the number on your card.
