8 Scams New Yorkers Are Falling for in 2026, and How to Spot Them

One of the most prevalent scams in New York arrives as a knock on the door with a tablet and a free roof attached.

Nothing about it sounded like a crime.

The pitch is boring on purpose, whether it comes from a porch in Broome County or a caller who already knows your power company’s hold music.

These are the scams trapping New Yorkers this year and how to identify them.

Note: This is general information, not financial or legal advice. Scam tactics and agency procedures are subject to change, so confirm the current guidance with the New York State Attorney General’s office.

1. Bank Fraud Alert Calls

Somebody claiming to work in your bank’s fraud department calls to say a stranger in another state is emptying your checking account, and asks you to move your balance somewhere safe while they investigate.

The safe account is theirs.

Impersonators were the most reported kind of fraud in the country for the fifth straight year in 2025, and people lost $3.5 billion to them, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Nearly $1 billion of that went to people posing as businesses.

The heaviest losses inside that group went to callers pretending to work at a bank.

Attorney General Letitia James sued the operator of Zelle over how easily scammers worked that network, where users lost more than $1 billion between 2017 and 2023.

No bank asks you to move money to protect it, and no bank asks you to keep the call to yourself.

Hang up and dial the number printed on your card.

2. Free Solar Panel Pitches

A salesperson turns up on a porch in Broome County with a tablet and a promise that a government program covers a solar system, with a new roof thrown in.

James sued Attyx, a home improvement company that used to trade as SUNco, in March 2026, alleging its salespeople told homeowners that clean energy incentives paid for the work while signing them into loans worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Her office estimates the pitch pulled in nearly $275 million in New York alone.

Much of that was from seniors on fixed incomes and homeowners who had told the salesperson they couldn’t afford a loan.

There’s no such program.

The paperwork is where it shows: A salesperson calls the document a credit check or an application, then turns the screen around and points at the signature box.

Anybody selling you a roof will wait while you read what you’re signing.

3. Pig-Butchering Crypto Pitches

The message arrives as a wrong number, or as a friendly note from a stranger who liked your photo of Keuka Lake.

Weeks of ordinary conversation follow, and then comes the trading account that has been so good to them.

The Attorney General’s office published a consumer alert and a plain-language guide on these schemes in February 2026, after New Yorkers handed over sums running from tens of thousands of dollars to more than a million.

The name is grim on purpose: Scammers talk about fattening a pig before the slaughter.

Watch what they do with the conversation.

They move you onto WhatsApp or WeChat, they always have a reason they can’t appear on video, and they ask you to keep the investment between the two of you.

Then comes the bitcoin ATM.

Walk away right there.

4. Remote Job Texts

James’s office, the U.S. Secret Service, and the Queens County District Attorney traced and froze $2.2 million in cryptocurrency stolen through a text-message job scheme, and one New York victim in that case lost more than $100,000.

The offer is flexible remote work rating products on an app, with a commission for every review.

Training feels convincing enough that people relax.

Then the working account needs funding.

Your balance has to match the price of whatever you’re reviewing, so the money goes in as cryptocurrency.

Withdrawals never happen.

When victims tried to pull their money out, the operators invented a credit score improvement fee, then a blockchain verification fee, then an escrow fee.

No employer needs your money in order to pay you.

5. Utility Shutoff Threats

The caller says your account is past due and a crew is already rolling, so pay right now or the power goes out tonight.

The clock is fake.

New York State Electric & Gas (NYSEG) and Rochester Gas and Electric tell customers they’ll never ask anybody to pay with prepaid debit cards, and that no employee turns up at a door to sell a discount program.

Caller ID won’t save you.

Scammers spoof the utility’s own number and record a greeting that sounds like the billing line.

The Attorney General’s Zelle complaint describes a customer who sent $1,476.89 to an account named Coned Billing after a caller told him his electricity was going off that day.

His bank told him it couldn’t get that money back.

A utility takes a check, a card, or a bank draft, and never a gift card, a wire, or a payment app.

That leaves reporting it, and New York splits that job between two offices.

6. DMV Ticket Payment Texts

A text says the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has a final notice on unpaid tickets, and your license goes in a few days unless you pay today.

The state DMV warned drivers about the latest wave in March 2026, and then-Commissioner Mark J.F. Schroeder was blunt about it: The agency never sends a text threatening suspension if you don’t pay within days.

Look at the sender.

These messages come from Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo addresses stuffed with names and long strings of digits, and the link lands on a page built to resemble dmv.ny.gov without being it.

The waves stop and start, which is why the same text turns up again months after you deleted it.

Forward it to 7726 so your carrier can block the next batch, then delete it.

7. Jury Duty Warrant Calls

In Onondaga County, the sheriff’s office warned residents about callers impersonating its own deputies, telling people they’d missed jury duty and owed a fine to stay out of jail.

None of it happened.

New York’s court system says jury duty scams are on the rise statewide, and warns that callers manipulate the line so an authentic courthouse number shows on your screen.

Scammers also borrow the name or the title of a judge, a clerk, or the Commissioner of Jurors.

Courts don’t work by surprise phone call, and a missed summons brings mail instead.

Questionnaires and summonses go out long before any fine exists.

The court system also says it’ll never take payment for a jury fine through Apple Pay, PayPal, Venmo, or Zelle.

If a call has you worried, dial 1-800-COURT-NY yourself and ask.

8. Fake Health Plan Sign-Ups

A call says your coverage lapsed, and a few hundred dollars today puts it back before you lose your doctor.

James and Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald flagged sellers of fake health insurance posing as NY State of Health, working from lookalike websites and phone numbers close enough to the official contact to pass a glance.

Medicaid, Child Health Plus, and the Essential Plan take enrollments all year and require a renewal every year, which keeps this call in rotation long after open enrollment closes.

Other versions dangle a gift card for updating your account.

That gift card is bait.

Three lines settle it: Nobody can charge you a fee to renew Medicaid, Child Health Plus, the Essential Plan, or a Qualified Health Plan.

State agencies don’t use the word Obamacare.

And the marketplace never asks for your bank account information, since a premium goes straight to the health plan you picked.

Where the Losses Land

Scam losses across New York ran to about $6.5 billion in 2025, according to a Consumer Federation of America report on the cost of online fraud.

Nationally, the FTC counted roughly $16 billion lost in the same year, the highest figure on its record and about a quarter more than 2024.

Imposters accounted for $3.5 billion of that total.

People posing as a government agency took about $920 million of that on their own.

Nearly one in three fraud reports involved somebody pretending to be somebody else.

That’s the whole business model.

What Reporting Gets You

Filing a complaint rarely brings the money home, and that's worth saying plainly before anybody promises otherwise.

Wires clear, scammers spend gift card codes within minutes, and they move cryptocurrency off the exchange into a wallet with no name on it.

Many victims never see a dollar of it again, and a bank that carried out a transfer you approved often won't reimburse you for it.

So why file?

Because investigators build cases out of paperwork, and yours might be the report that closes a gap in one.

Save the screenshots, the wallet address, the name on the account your money landed in, and the time each transfer went out.