Craigslist Car Scams Are on the Rise, Especially in Midwest
An insurance group is warning consumers of a widespread scam in which fraudsters are buying cars on Craigslist with bogus checks.
The National Insurance Crime Bureau has identified nearly 100 instances throughout the Midwest of Craigslist car sales in which the buyers used fake bank checks.
“These scams are well organized and have all the appearances of being legitimate,” NCIB President and CEO Joe Wehrle said in a statement. “But in the end, the criminal gets the car and the sellers or their financial institutions are left on the hook for thousands of dollars still owed on the car.”
Related: A New Vicious Scam Targets Desperate Homeowners
The scam appears to be especially prevalent in states where vehicle owners retain the title despite an outstanding lien. NCIB, a nonprofit supported by the insurance industry, advises car sellers never to sign over the title until they have the money for the sale in hand, even if that means waiting a week or more for a check to clear.
Craigslist offers its own list of tips to avoid scams. Remember, the online marketplace offers no guarantees regarding items bought or sold via its site and little recourse if you are the victim of a scam.
The site’s No. 1 tip is to do all transactions in person. A growing number of police stations now offer dedicated space for people meeting in person for transactions they’ve agreed to online.
Those with information about insurance fraud or vehicle theft can anonymously report it by calling 800-835-6422 or texting keyword “fraud” to TIP411.
Tax Refunds Rebound
Smaller refunds in the first few weeks of the current tax season were shaping up to be a political problem for Republicans, but new data from the IRS shows that the value of refund checks has snapped back and is now running 1.3 percent higher than last year. The average refund through February 23 last year was $3,103, while the average refund through February 22 of 2019 was $3,143 – a difference of $40. The chart below from J.P. Morgan shows how refunds performed over the last 3 years.
Number of the Day: $22 Trillion
The total national debt surpassed $22 trillion on Monday. Total public debt outstanding reached $22,012,840,891,685.32, to be exact. That figure is up by more than $1.3 trillion over the past 12 months and by more than $2 trillion since President Trump took office.
Chart of the Week: The Soaring Cost of Insulin
The cost of insulin used to treat Type 1 diabetes nearly doubled between 2012 and 2016, according to an analysis released this week by the Health Care Cost Institute. Researchers found that the average point-of-sale price increased “from $7.80 a day in 2012 to $15 a day in 2016 for someone using an average amount of insulin (60 units per day).” Annual spending per person on insulin rose from $2,864 to $5,705 over the five-year period. And by 2016, insulin costs accounted for nearly a third of all heath care spending for those with Type 1 diabetes (see the chart below), which rose from $12,467 in 2012 to $18,494.
Chart of the Day: Shutdown Hits Like a Hurricane
The partial government shutdown has hit the economy like a hurricane – and not just metaphorically. Analysts at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said Tuesday that the shutdown has now cost the economy about $26 billion, close to the average cost of $27 billion per hurricane calculated by the Congressional Budget Office for storms striking the U.S. between 2000 and 2015. From an economic point of view, it’s basically “a self-imposed natural disaster,” CRFB said.
Chart of the Week: Lowering Medicare Drug Prices
The U.S. could save billions of dollars a year if Medicare were empowered to negotiate drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies, according to a paper published by JAMA Internal Medicine earlier this week. Researchers compared the prices of the top 50 oral drugs in Medicare Part D to the prices for the same drugs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which negotiates its own prices and uses a national formulary. They found that Medicare’s total spending was much higher than it would have been with VA pricing.
In 2016, for example, Medicare Part D spent $32.5 billion on the top 50 drugs but would have spent $18 billion if VA prices were in effect – or roughly 45 percent less. And the savings would likely be larger still, Axios’s Bob Herman said, since the study did not consider high-cost injectable drugs such as insulin.
