Financial scam artists are heavily targetting military veterans, costing them $205 million in financial losses over the past four years, the Federal Trade Commission reported yesterday.

During the past four years, the FTC has logged more than 161,000 financial fraud reports from military veterans, according to a new FTC report.

For both veterans and active-duty personnel, imposter scams were among the top five frauds causing a loss, the FTC said. “Imposters pretend to be someone you trust to try to convince you to send them money. These scammers use all kinds of angles to make their stories sound believable.”

In particular, FTC reported seeing scams involving criminals who pretend to be officials from the IRS or other government agencies and use their official sounding positions to attempt to swindle money from unwary vets and soldiers.

“They even rig caller ID to make their call look official. They play on your fears and threaten to take your driver's license or sue, arrest, or deport you, if you don’t pay. Hang up—legitimate government officials won't threaten you or insist that you pay with a gift card, a wire transfer, or cashier's check,” the FTC said.

Other scammers pretend to be from legitimate businesses, including popular online shopping websites, in order to phish for personal information, including potential victims’ credit card, Social Security and driver’s license numbers.

“A caller may claim to be from Amazon.com. They say your credit card has been charged a large amount of money for some order. Then, they’ll give you the ‘Amazon Support’ phone number and tell you to immediately call if you didn’t make that order. Don’t do it. That’s not really Amazon. The scammers want you to call their number so they can ask for your passwords, credit card number, and other sensitive information to get your money,” the FTC said.

The agency also reported that scam artists are now actively posing as online suitors and possible love interests on sites such as Facebook and eHarmony to steal personal financial information from unsuspecting military personnel and veterans.

“You meet someone on a social networking site. They seem like a perfect match, but soon enough they ask you to send money. The person pretending to be your virtual sweetheart is a scammer. If an online love interest asks you for money, don’t send it,” the FTC said.

Finally, scam artists are even posing as tech support from reputable corporations,  playing on users’ fears of being hacked or getting an online virus to elicit personal information from the unsuspecting.

“Scammers pose as big name companies and call or send pop-up messages to scare you about the security of your computer,” the FTC said. “They run scans to show you what’s wrong with your computer. But the truth is, they aren’t finding and fixing problems. They just want you to pay for software or tech support services you don't need. Don't give out your financial information, and don't let anyone take control of your computer,” the agency said.