Exclusive | How the festive season became boomtime for scammers ruining Christmas for their victims

For Toni Campbell, the most wonderful time of the year has been screwed by scammers. The Queens native, a 63-year-old loving aunt to a flock of nieces and nephews, sprinted out of the office early — with sweat dripping from her brow, her heartbeat racing and her stomach in knots — on the afternoon of Dec.5. Minutes before making a dash, Campbell received a FedEx package at her job, which she believed contained the $200 Beats by Dre Powerbeats Pro earbuds she’d purchased from a third-party vendor on Walmart.com as a Christmas gift for her teenage nephew. But upon opening the parcel, rather than a pair of hate headphones, she found 500 sheets of printing paper. “I was, like, ‘Wait! My stuff isn’t in here,’” Campbell, an administrative assistant at an Upper East Side non-profit organization, exclusively recalled to The Post.

“I showed my coworker, Marife Garcia, and she said, ‘Oh my God, they scammed you!’”The words sent a thunderbolt of terror through Campbell, rendering her physically ill.   She’s now in the groaning, growing number of New Yorkers who’ve recently been victimized by scam artists and fraudsters. It’s a trap that routinely ensnares locals at Christmastime. “Sadly, Santa’s big season is also prime time for cons who woo unsuspecting innocents — such as Campbell — with too-good-to-be-true sales, bogus websites mimicking those of legitimate companies, phony travel deals, and AI-generated phone calls or messages,” said Darius Kingsley, head of consumer fraud and scam prevention at JPMorganChase. “Scammers are especially active during the holidays, using tactics like fraudulent travel offers, fake delivery notifications, and deceptive charity appeals to exploit the holiday season and people’s generosity,” he told The Post.“If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”Still, citizens of the Big Apple — a city known for its sharp-witted, no-nonsense inhabitants — are falling prey to swindles a...