I have a pop quiz for you this morning. How much money would you say Americans lost to Internet scams and online crime in 2020? Would you believe $4.2 billion? That’s billion—with a “b”! And that’s just in one year’s time. Internet scams are an increasing problem all over the world. (1)   

If I were to ask for a quick show of hands, how many of you have gotten an email or message on social media that you suspected was a scam? It’s a pretty common occurrence.

I read an excellent story on the blog Now I Know! by Dan Lewis that I’d like to share with you. It’s about a potential Internet scammer. A few years ago, a man from Utah named Ben Taylor got a Facebook message from a man named Joel Willie. Joel Willie was from Liberia, and he was trying to run a type of scam called an “advance-fee sc…