The latest gift certificate fraud these days is through texting, where the message will promise a huge gift card to a significant store. It isn't the worst of gift certificate cons, but it's far from harmless.
Text-message gift card con
Criminals are almost always unbelievably creative. It is a real shame that they will not put all their skills to good use. People notice how good scam artists are at what they do, and they waste just as much time trying to fraud people as they would start a legitimate business.
Of course, that won't take place.
Daily Finance reports that there is a new gift card fraud going around right now. In fact, the text message gift certificate scam is most likely a good one. It offers gift cards for businesses such as Walmart, Best Purchase and Target through text messages. Sometimes, the amount is as much as $1,000 in gift cards.
SMS scam
The text message is sent promising up to $1,000 or more on a gift card to the customer if they go to a website and enter in the code. The phone number would be needed too. It is an SMS phishing scam.
The consumer ends up getting a whole bunch of emails sent to them promising cheap cruises and all kinds of other things. The truth is that the consumer's personal information is stolen and sold to a black market list for marketing cons.
There are at least two attorneys that have filed suits about the texts, and some of those may result in being class-action, according to Daily Finance. The website Scambook.com is going to deal with the fight, according to NBC Low Angeles. This issue is that it can also lead to identity theft. Over 300,000 people received messages for the cons from the site.
Not the worst scam
WBAY reported that there have been many scams much worse than this one. This includes ones where fraudsters use credit card numbers to purchase a lot of gift cards. Then, the cash is transferred to a prepaid debit card, and the cash is taken out. This can be a much worse fraud than the text messaging frauds.
That scam actually happened at a Walmart where more than $80,000 in cash was stolen, according to MLive. Cashier Erica Shontae Walker is waiting for her punishment as an accomplice to the crime.
A 2011 Fox Business article showed that there was another way of crooks. They would write down gift certificate numbers and wait until it was bought. Then, they would spend all the cash online.
Text-message gift card con
Criminals are almost always unbelievably creative. It is a real shame that they will not put all their skills to good use. People notice how good scam artists are at what they do, and they waste just as much time trying to fraud people as they would start a legitimate business.
Of course, that won't take place.
Daily Finance reports that there is a new gift card fraud going around right now. In fact, the text message gift certificate scam is most likely a good one. It offers gift cards for businesses such as Walmart, Best Purchase and Target through text messages. Sometimes, the amount is as much as $1,000 in gift cards.
SMS scam
The text message is sent promising up to $1,000 or more on a gift card to the customer if they go to a website and enter in the code. The phone number would be needed too. It is an SMS phishing scam.
The consumer ends up getting a whole bunch of emails sent to them promising cheap cruises and all kinds of other things. The truth is that the consumer's personal information is stolen and sold to a black market list for marketing cons.
There are at least two attorneys that have filed suits about the texts, and some of those may result in being class-action, according to Daily Finance. The website Scambook.com is going to deal with the fight, according to NBC Low Angeles. This issue is that it can also lead to identity theft. Over 300,000 people received messages for the cons from the site.
Not the worst scam
WBAY reported that there have been many scams much worse than this one. This includes ones where fraudsters use credit card numbers to purchase a lot of gift cards. Then, the cash is transferred to a prepaid debit card, and the cash is taken out. This can be a much worse fraud than the text messaging frauds.
That scam actually happened at a Walmart where more than $80,000 in cash was stolen, according to MLive. Cashier Erica Shontae Walker is waiting for her punishment as an accomplice to the crime.
A 2011 Fox Business article showed that there was another way of crooks. They would write down gift certificate numbers and wait until it was bought. Then, they would spend all the cash online.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire