California authorities have seized and closed down 10 fake Obamacare websites, as fears of possible fraud have heightened in the wake of the program's launch.
According to Reuters, sites imitating the official "Covered California" health insurance exchange webpage were taken offline in a move to stop fraudulent websites that have cropped up on the Internet.
"These websites fraudulently imitated Covered California in order to lure consumers away from plans that provide the benefits of the Affordable Care Act," spokesperson for the California Attorney General Kamala Harris wrote in a statement. "My office will continue to investigate and shut down these kinds of sites."
Websites like "Californiahelathbenefitexchange.com" began showing up online once the official California affordable health care site opened for business. Customers who used Google searches to find the Covered California webpage were instead shown advertisements and pop-ups for the fraudulent sites instead. Some of the fake websites used the exchange's logo and name, Reuters reported.
But once consumers clicked on the links to the bogus websites, they were taken to the pages of private insurance companies and brokers, instead of the state's insurance market where policies that aligned with the new legislation can be found.
Harris told Reuters that a handful of states have been investigating cases of fraud such as these - two months ago, Better Business Bureaus around the United States alerted that fake telemarketers were phoning customers with false offers Affordable Care Act information.
The California Attorney General's spokesperson urged consumers to go directly to the state's site, coveredca.com, for more information.
