Today I’m going to tell you about two scams currently making the rounds, one of which cost someone I know a lot of money. Perhaps you are already wise to these; some readers are not, so please share it. We’re here to protect our friends & family from being the next victims.
Kiki and Bobo are today’s pseudonyms for two real people close to me — friends, family, coworkers, whatever. Kiki lost $20,000 in cash irrecoverably. Bobo had a ton of fraudulent card charges, but they were recovered, and had to replace their debit and credit cards, which is a huge hassle. So this is no joke.
Kiki’s Big Adventure
Kiki’s story first. Kiki received a phone call from the local Sheriff’s office, from the department of an officer they knew — in Kiki’s work they know some of the officers. Apparently, Kiki had failed to appear in court four times, accumulating a $10K fine each time (in Kiki’s line of work, appearing in court is common). Failure to pay would cause the immediate cancellation of Kiki’s professional license (an existential disaster) and a 30-day incarceration.
Kiki learned later that this call was targeted. Quite a few people in their company received this same call. A few recognized it as a scam, others did not and also lost money — but Kiki lost the most. The scammer knew the people in this profession needed their licenses, knew police officers, and were vulnerable. They went down the list of employees and called them.
Not too long previously, Kiki had had a real experience with a district attorney who made very similar threats. And so, from Kiki’s experience, this was precedented and credible.
The scammer required Kiki to stay on the phone. Kiki had to pay the $40K fine today, in cash, with gift cards. The instructions were to buy eighty $500 gift cards and then read the numbers for each over the phone. Kiki drained a home safe of cash and went to a bank to draw as much as possible from a credit card, which together totaled only $20K. The scammer said that would do for now. Kiki then had to drive all over town going to megamarts to buy gift cards for $500 cash apiece, and keep the receipts.
Luckily, many megamarts are wise to this scam, and have trained their cashiers to flag $500 gift card purchases and explain the scam to the purchaser. But recall that Kiki had been through something very similar before, and had concrete reason to know this was not a scam. And so the purchases went through — forty $500 gift cards, all bought with untraceable green cash.
Kiki was instructed — mind you, the scammer had kept them on the phone all this time (to prevent them from calling anyone to ask for help or verification) — to keep all the receipts, and then mail them to “IRS - Washington DC”. In fact, this was just the scammer’s way to try and get rid of the receipts, possibly for an additional layer of protection.
The next day, when Kiki and their family & friends had discussed it, it was realized that it had been a scam. Police came. The police explained the scam and that they money was almost certainly already overseas. There was nothing that could be done; even calling the FBI was said to be a waste of time. They did call anyway, and the FBI said there was nothing they could do.
You might think Kiki was foolish or naive. Recall that this was targeted, by someone who knew the pressure points of employees at Kiki’s company, compounded by Kiki’s own personal experience with a DA.
No government or law enforcement employee will ever, EVER, request payment by gift cards, or demand that you stay on the phone under threat of arrest.
Side note: Last week I bought a $500 gift card to help my daughter with a college move, and was curious to see if the cashier at Target would advise me about the scam. She didn’t. I told her about it, and she had never heard of it. So some megamarts are not doing all they can to protect their customers.
Bobo’s Big Adventure
Bobo’s scam was much more common, and was a massive scale bot attack sent out to countless people. Many of us would recognize it as a scam; many of us might not. Bobo is younger and had never encountered such a scam before. It depended upon expectation of a delivery, which in these days, many of us are, as Bobo was. So to Bobo it was not even suspicious.
Bobo received a text message that said:
From: ozonejnw@icloud.com
The USPS package has arrived at the warehouse and cannot be delivered due to incomplete address information. Please confirm your address in the link.
https://dap3ups.com
(Please reply to 1, then exit the SMS, open the SMS activation link again, or copy the link to Safari browser and open it)
The USPS team wishes you a great day!
I’ve changed some characters in the web address so this post won’t result in any visits to the scam site. The link led to a form to “enter your credit card information to confirm your delivery address.” Bobo did so, and when the form was submitted, it said that card was invalid and to enter a different card. Bobo entered another card. Same response. At that point Bobo smelled a rat and closed their browser.
So, somewhere in the world, Bobo’s scammer received complete credit card information for two cards, including the security code. Within the hour, Bobo called their two credit card companies, and there had already been many 3-figure charges to each. Luckily, they were reported as fraudulent and Bobo was not on the hook. But the cards obviously had to be canceled.
Tipoffs: bad English, implausible situation, web address doesn’t match the claimed sender, sender is obviously not either the USPS or the web address given; and the thing I noticed first, which is that the web address does not have a tracking number attached or anything that would have identified Bobo to the website, thus telling us that the story of Bobo’s undeliverable package is a fiction. It’s just a generic website with a form telling any visitor to enter card information. Apparently it works often enough.
This scam worked on Bobo because this was their first time encountering such a thing. We all start out inexperienced, and though many of you would not have been taken in by this, some of you would have; and quite a few people you know would have.
Please share this anywhere you think it might do someone some good.
One scam I came across not too long ago. I got an email saying that my card was being charged $900 for some stupid purchase. It had a number to call for info or to cancel. I called it to cancel, and the guy (likely in India) directed me to a website where I was supposed to download a remote terminal program. In other words, to give them full control of my computer! I'm sure that people who don't know what a "remote terminal" program is might easily fall for this.
I had one of the USPS texts last week, I started to add a card, then hesitated and checked the tracking, and found that the shipper had the correct address then suspected a scam. They were requesting a payment of thirty cents. I got lucky.