‘Cramming’ Now Biggest Scam, Group Says

The practice of “cramming,” or charging consumers on their phone bills for services they didn’t ask for, has become the No. 1 scam in the U.S., ahead of “slamming” and sweepstakes frauds, a consumer group said.

The nonprofit National Consumers League reported getting twice as many complaints for the first five months of this year about cramming as slamming, the illegal switching of customers’ phone carriers without their knowledge. The group wouldn’t be more specific, except to say the complaints numbered several thousand. Slamming ranked second among consumers.

It’s the first time since the Washington-based group began its National Fraud Information Center in 1992 that sweepstakes frauds weren’t ranked No. 1. In such scams, people pay fees to get prizes that never appear.

The consumer group ranked advance-fee loans--which are false promises of loans that require advance payment of fees--as the third-most-complained-about scam; sweepstakes frauds were fourth; and work-at-home scams, in which consumers buy kits to stuff envelopes or make jewelry under the false promise of big profit, were fifth.

The league also ranked the top 10 states in order of complaints about cramming. New York headed the list, with California ranked seventh.