The number of fraudulent payments reached €160m last year with so-called e-money fraud suffering the sharpest rise, a study by the Central Bank of Ireland shows. The biggest losses last year were credit transfers, or bank payments, followed by card payments, which made up a combined €113m. Neither saw significant increase, however, but fraudulent e-money payments rose from €3.3m in 2023 to €25.6m last year. E-money is the digital form of cash stored electronically, which can also be referred to as digital or electronic wallets.
At first, Sicari, the top rental broker at Douglas Elliman, who leads a team of six other agents, assumed the callers were clients. 'Oh, which apartment?' she'd ask. But the addresses they gave her didn't exist, nor did the prices: $950 for a Soho studio, $2,500 for a loftlike two-bed, two-bath in Greenwich Village, a Gramercy one-bedroom in a luxury doorman building for $1,800 a month.