Fairfax High School students helping seniors spot swindlers through ‘ScamCops’

FAIRFAX, Va. ( DC News Now ) — Preventing people from getting swindled, a group of Fairfax High School students are using technology to educate their neighbors through a website and artificial intelligence.

At any age you can fall victim to fraud.

“I had a scam incident in eighth grade. I lost a good chunk of my money and this propelled me to start ScamCops,” Advik Atyam said.

ScamCops is the brainchild of Fairfax High School rising senior Atyam. The project was originally just a school club but it has since turned into a nonprofit.

“We’ve reached out to around five retirement homes and we’re working with them and we have around 50 student volunteers,” David Nam said.

Volunteers help train seniors in person on how to spot frauds.

“Our high school has a lot of people that are in need of volunteer hours so we decided to optimize them and try to get as many volunteers as possible and to go to these retirement homes and spread scam awareness,” Atyam said.

The ScamCops website features a scam awareness guide, scam quiz and as of March, an AI chatbot where you can ask a question about an email, text or phone call you receive.

This year, the website reached 2,000 page views across 36 countries.

“It’s been it’s been an honor really getting to go to these senior homes and work with all these people,” Yousif Al Atbi said.

In May, ScamCops won first place in the 2024 Fairfax Area Student Shark Tank Technology Challenge.

“We’re also hoping to reach out to different banks and set up different fliers and boards to, further spread our outreach,” Al Atbi.

Born out of personal struggles the students hope ScamCops continues to save people money and headaches.

“Even if we can help one person, we’ve done our job. Our goal is to help as many people as possible, and we’re proud that we have done that before,” Atyam said.

The trio hopes to expand the chapter to other high schools in the area within Fairfax and Loudoun counties. And they are looking to get more retirement homes on board.

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