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My dad got scammed for $3k worth of gift cards

• flerchin 6y ago
  I feel bad for the victims. It's almost always the elderly and they're relentlessly pursued over the phone. You basically have to remove their phones, or remove their capability to ruin their finances. I imagine that day is coming quite soon for my in-laws.
  • A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
    I agree. My friend got scammed with a variation of the gift card scam. The main difference in his case, fear was not exploited, but rather the search of an amazing deal ( $100 for a new ipad or something like that ). I probed a little bit since I was curious how he perceived it and he effectively said the idea of getting a deal took the best of him.
    • sq_ 6y ago
      At this point I just assume that any deal that looks too good to be true probably is. There's been a few times where I've found out after the fact that the deal really was real, but I'd rather miss out on a good deal than get scammed.
      • tartoran 6y ago
        All phone solicitation is scammy, I think the government should advertise that to old people.
        • sq_ 6y ago
          For sure. I was mostly referring to online "deals" with my comment, but it definitely applies to phone solicitation, too. I personally ignore almost any phone call from unknown numbers these days because so many are scammy or robocalls. I figure that if anyone really needs me, they'll leave a message.
          • tartoran 6y ago
            I keep on getting robocalls from a Chinese scam for more than 1 to 2 years now. I don't understand Chinese but asked a friend to translate and it's obviously a scam aimed at older chinese expats. They always leave the same message. Im surprised it still works after all this time.
        • stallmanite 6y ago
          I avoid all solicitation in general. If I want something I research it and buy it. I never make a purchcase based on an incoming offer of any sort even if I want the item or service and it’s a good deal. It avoids 90% of scams before I even enter the funnel.
      • netsharc 6y ago
        I once went to a car show where Samsung was showing their Android Auto connectivity. They had a raffle for a 49" 32:9 monitor, I put in my name. A few weeks later an email came saying I had won. Of course I thought it was a scam, on second reading I remember giving my details for the raffle, and I genuinely had won the nonitor..
        • amerkhalid 6y ago
          I was at some festival where they had a raffle like this, thinking it was harmless, I put in my name and number. A week later I get a call that I have won a vacation but I need to come and attend their seminar. It was some sort of buy timeshares which work across multiple properties around the world. Total cost was $10-15K but you can make low monthly payments. After the loan is paid off, you can stay for free during your vacations. I did some rough calculations and thought it was worth it. But when I asked for better pictures or addresses of their properties, they could not provide it. They were getting frustrated and kept saying why you care what your room looks like, who stays in their room on a vacation, etc. After their refusal to give any such info, I left but there were other people who were signing up. Later, I learned that these are indeed scams, and I got lucky that I didn't sign up with them. Their properties might be run down, and the company might fold after a few years and you will lose access access to "their" vacation properties. To their credit, they did give me a a gift certificate for low end hotels chain.
          • notahacker 6y ago
            Jeez, the timeshare industry is infamous for overpromising and not having the best properties or security for your 'investment' but not even having glossy brochures and maps to show customers giving out buying signals is really low effort for $15k
            • Nextgrid 6y ago
              If the only way to sell those goods is with aggressive, high-pressure sales pitches & environments it's a good sign nobody actually wants that product and that entire industry should be regulated away.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • duxup 6y ago
    And sometimes it's not at all the same older person who you think gets scammed. I know some elderly folks who I thought were in pretty good shape mentally and such got pulled into one of those scams. It was the grandchild calling for money from jail type thing. I never would have thought they would have fallen for a scam like that, they did. You can never talk too early to older folks about this stuff. Lay down some hard and fast rules such as "Never give out info / anything to someone who calls you first, call them at a number you look up on your bank statement, or call someone directly. Call me / alternate person if someone asks your for information or money, etc." Scammers have excuses of course but some of those rules will work.
  • reaperducer 6y ago
    It's almost always the elderly and they're relentlessly pursued over the phone. I think that's a stereotype, rather than a rule. I've seen articles in the newspaper occasionally where the victim is a person in their 30's or 40's. I suspect that we don't hear a lot about that because there isn't a lobbying or information group like the AARP for 30-somethings. Also, losing $250 to a scammer is less tragic for a younger victim with a full-time job than it is for a 70-year-old on SNAP, so they don't talk about it as much. When I worked in a large office with very ordinary, I saw people of all ages falling for scams. They just didn't know they were scams until it was all over, and then they just stopped talking about it.
• Pfhreak 6y ago
  If you aren't already familiar, check out Kitboga: https://www.twitch.tv/kitboga https://www.twitch.tv/kitboga He live streams calling scammers that are running exactly these sorts of scams, tries to tie them up for as long as possible, wasting their time. It's super educational as well, showing how these scammers try various tactics to keep people afraid.
  • vcanales 6y ago
    I've been consuming his content non-stop for a few months now. While there are other scam baiters around, I feel like Kitboga's approach is the best one to achieve the most possible exposure of these practices. He has a huge Twitch and YouTube audience and I think he absolutely 100% deserves it.
    • akmarinov 6y ago
      “Should i wait a moment?” Still has me laughing
      • wmij 6y ago
        One of my favorites from his Edna character. "Edna: Which of the following would you most prefer? A puppy, a pretty flower from your sweetie, or a large, properly formatted datafile? Scammer: I would choose the datafile"
        • jayrot 6y ago
          I'm guessing you already know, but for everyone who may not -- that's a line from Futurama.
  • sevenf0ur 6y ago
    As an example, one of his time wasters is a browser extension that redirects Google search to the 8th page, making it harder for the scammers to bring up websites thru search such as the chase demo banking site. It's very amusing to watch them struggle.
• uptown 6y ago
  This seems like as good a place as any to discuss. What steps have you taken to protect your parents from these and other scams? I'm looking for both technological and non-technological ideas and any info on what has or hasn't worked.
  • gen220 6y ago
    My parents get these kinds of phone calls all the time. Their phone rings maybe 10 times per day, and in a given week 95+% are scam calls. What worked for my mom was to have her listen to an NPR radio show where they investigated this sketchy world. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/08/18/544448670/episode-789-robocall-invasion https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/08/18/544448670/epis... and https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/01/29/464859624/episode-680-anatomy-of-a-scam https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/01/29/464859624/epis.... Once she was able to see the system behind the calls, that screened out 90+%. There are still banks that call her every week to try and convince her to refinance her mortgage on terrible terms. The best antidotes to this are financial security (even if what you're telling me is true, I don't need to do it to make ends meet), financial literacy, and hard-and-fast rules. 1. Never give any information over the phone. Particularly financial or identifying information. 2. If you feel sold or pressured, tell the person that you need to go to the bathroom, and that you'll call them back. Then, call me and we'll talk through it together. I got a couple phone calls from my mom over the next couple weeks, but they built her confidence to the point where she can spot the scams out very clearly now. I can't imagine how difficult this would be, if my parents had short-term memory loss or worse. This industry is really soul-crushing, and the FCC needs to stomp it out.
  • defen 6y ago
    I've told my parents and in-laws (mid 70s) two things (they're cognitively with-it as far as mid-70s people go, I don't know what advice would work for people who are losing their mental faculties). The things I told them are: 1) Gift card = scam. Always, 100% of the time. No government agency and no legitimate company will ask for payment via gift cards, ever. My in-laws nearly got scammed by "Apple support" calling to say their router had been hacked and was being used for illegal activity and that they needed to pay using iTunes gift cards to have "Apple support" "clean out their router". 2) Nothing is immediately urgent. Unless someone is dying in front of you, the problem can be solved later. Banks, government bureaucracies, lawsuits, etc all work via snail mail and lawyers and paperwork, not by calling you up and telling you you're going to jail and are going to lose all your money unless you do something immediately.
• JackFr 6y ago
  When I read about these scams, I always wonder how do the scammers justify this to themselves? I can’t believe there are that many true sociopaths completely lacking in empathy. And I believe no one is the bad guy in their own narrative. Do they convince themselves that they’re not really harming “rich people who don’t need all that money” or that their own situations are so extreme that they “need” to steal for their own survival. Or they just don’t think of stealing as an act with any moral weight. Or possibly I just have too sanguine view of humanity.
  • pscsbs 6y ago
    Never underestimate the power of poverty and desperation.
  • zepolen 6y ago
    Their thoughts: If I don't do it someone else will. If they're dumb enough to fall for it, they deserved it.
  • spiritplumber 6y ago
    Some are sociopaths and don't care. Some think that everyone in the target country they're calling is rich and/or insured and/or will get reimbursed by their government anyway, so it's more like shoplifting (from an insurance company or the government) than stealing from a person.
  • outworlder 6y ago
    > I always wonder how do the scammers justify this to themselves Scammers rarely work alone. For most, it's just a job. One that pays decently well. In most cases the companies(yes, companies) involved maintain the appearances of a normal call center, with sales targets and everything. One such scam company was even providing Japanese language training, so they could target a market that's less disputed.
    • ocdtrekkie 6y ago
      Indeed, and commission sales is a heck of a drug. If you need money, and a company is paying you to sell people a product... you may find yourself selling products you don't really believe in in a call center, where you know the person buying isn't really getting a good deal. Only a tiny step further to actively trying to take their money for a nice bump in your commission check. Add that your scam call center employee might have family to feed, and suddenly scamming the rich senior's retirement fund seems like a minor transgression...
• techsupporter 6y ago
  I've told both of my parents--in their 70s--that I will never, under any circumstances, ever call them for money and that any call they might ever receive claiming to be me asking for money or asking for it on my behalf is guaranteed to be a scam. Yet it still happened that, during the exact week my family was on a Caribbean cruise that included a stop in Mexico[0], scammers targeted both of my parents' mobile phone numbers insisting that they were alternatively Mexican authorities demanding bail money for me or that they were my spouse sobbing over the phone that I'd been in a tragic boating accident and needed money for the hospital. This was before international roaming was included with my mobile phone plan so when I got back to port a few days later I turned on my phone that morning to several voicemails from my parents, starting out panicky then realizing what was going on then positively jovial at how they'd played the scammers along for almost a full day. They didn't send any money but both of them said it was incredibly difficult to keep what I'd told them in mind because "what if it really was you needing help?" 0 - We think the scammers got the information off of the Facebook pages of one of our related family members who posted publicly about "being envious of [my name tagged] going to Cozumel" next week and then trolling linked family members for people who appeared older.
  • Scratchy 6y ago
    I think "trawling" would be more appropriate than "trolling" here.
    • chrisseaton 6y ago
      Why's that?
      • andrewzah 6y ago
        Because trolling makes no sense in that sentence. They were looking for older family members for potential targets. edit: apparently trolling is fine here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/troll https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/troll
        • 6y ago
• AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
  I noticed the last time I tried to buy a PSN gift card at CVS (which I do because I don't trust Sony to store my credit card information), the terminal actually flashed a warning about gift card scams. It's sad that this has become so common as to actually need these kind of warnings. I understand if you're paying a ransomware threat and know that the guy on the other end of the line is a scumbag, but, I can't imagine how someone gets fooled into thinking the FBI/IRS/other three-letter agency would accept iTunes gift cards as tender, much less demand it.
  • gambiting 6y ago
    Tbf when you are sending a Western Union transfer, the form that you fill out has a very specific warning, in bold, saying that WU is commonly used for scams and to never ever send any money to someone you don't know. I imagine the effectiveness of these warnings is near zero.
    • walrus01 6y ago
      Anecdotally the WU customer service agents (usually at third party check cashing/money service places that) are much, much less suspicious of questioning people on money transfers when the ethnic appearance of the person matches the destination. Since sending money to family members and friends is one of the most common uses of WU. For instance a person who looks south asian sending money to Pakistan. Or a person who looks Filipino sending money to some small town in Palawan.
• JackFr 6y ago
  My 84 year old mother got a message from the State of New York saying she had unclaimed funds and should fill out a form to claim them. She quite reasonably assumed this was a scam and ignored it. A few months later she mentioned it, and my brother who was familiar with the actual process looked on the website, saw that she did have unclaimed funds, and he filled out the form. Turns out the initial message was completely legit. There was a brokerage account which had fallen through the cracks when her own mother had died, and she got a check for ~$20,000.
  • gen220 6y ago
    There's a lot of money held up like this! This link is just for federal money: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/11/11/244545556/the-government-s-18-billion-pile-of-unclaimed-cash-in-1-graph https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/11/11/244545556/the-...
    • stuff4ben 6y ago
      Thanks for this link!!! I just claimed $12 from a balance overpayment on a credit card, but my sister-in-law seems to have at least $250 in unclaimed cash awaiting her.
  • gambiting 6y ago
    Heh, I remember when Android first launched, I made a little calculator app for it so it was ready on launch day. Few months later, I got a completely plain text message from some random email address, saying something like "congrats, your app was one of the first 10,000 apps on the Play Store, to say thank you we would like to send you a Nexus One. Please fill out your details on this page <link to some random spreadsheet>". I immediately thought it was a scam, there was absolutely nothing identifying it as coming from Google, nothing that would give me any confidence whatsoever. But, I googled it, and yep, Google has announced they would be giving out phones to early developers - so I filled out the form and without ever receiving any further communication from them, a Nexus One arrived in post couple months later. It was incredibly bizarre, and in hindsight I wonder if they did it on purpose to limit the number of phones they needed to send out.
  • 6y ago
• spiritplumber 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CsEuJNSnh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CsEuJNSnh8 This is a nice and simple scammer-time-waster script.
• tartoran 6y ago
  I think a solution to this is for all the giftcards to add a delay of one week in order to cash in the points. This way the scammed would be able to get some money back once they realize it was a scam.
  • csunbird 6y ago
    That will make them useless.
    • yesplorer 6y ago
      why will it make them useless? Does anyone ever need gift cards urgently?
      • tartoran 6y ago
        Scammers do.
        • yesplorer 6y ago
          and that's the reason for the above suggestion. Or you aren't following the discussion?
  • mynameishere 6y ago
    Or even 24 hours. It seems like a lot of people get off the phone and immediately realize they've been scammed. ...I'm curious about how many people however, are totally fooled by the scammer--everything is very realistic up to a point--but then get to the part about paying the IRS in...iTunes gift cards. "Like, what?...[click]". 90 percent? 10 percent? Maybe no one.
    • tartoran 6y ago
      We are talking about seniors who get scammed here, it looks like it's not as obvious to them
• jariel 6y ago
  Someone called me this morning impersonating the financial investigations unit of the 'Bank of Canada'. Literally. I hung up immediately and called back, it was a spoofed number. We need better controls over calling, source numbers etc..
  • wizzwizz4 6y ago
    Don't call back. Sometimes it's not a spoofed number – and if it's the scammers' actual number, you're calling back the scammers. Look up the number online (preferably after a 1–2 hour wait, because sometimes they can keep your phone connected after you hang up, so new calls just go straight to them).
• joshstrange 6y ago
  I could see myself falling for something like this up to the point I was asked to buy gift cards. I feel like that would set off all the BS detectors in my head. I rarely answer my phone if it's a number I don't know (if it's important it will come in the mail or they will leave a message) and always call back a number I lookup online to handle things like CC Fraud calls. I'm not trying to pretend the manipulation isn't effective or say this person should have seen through the scam but I just cant see myself buying gift cards and reading them out over the phone to a "government agent" no matter how much info they had on me. I would love to listen to a successful scam phone call (not one where the person being scammed is trolling them but a real case of getting scammed) to better understand this.
• mathrawka 6y ago
  After an aunt of mine got scammed just like this, but to a lower tune of money, I got so sick of this happening to vulnerable people. I went ahead and made an app and put it on her phone. The other apps and services out there operate on a blacklist model. They block calls they know to be bad. My app turns that around and operates on a whitelist model. That being said, I had to help my aunt out some in getting it working, but now I am confident that she won't be scammed again. Despite all the normal warnings we give our elders, in the heat of the moment, the scammers know how to take advantage of them. The best thing is to not allow them to ring their phone. If anyone cares, my app is in the app stores, and available 100% free for basic usage. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/robostopper-block-spam-calls/id1468855457 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/robostopper-block-spam-calls/i... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codeheadlabs.robostopper https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codeheadla...
  • robertdenir0 6y ago
    Smooth ad my friend.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • thehashrocket 6y ago
    I know on iOS you can just block any calls from contacts that are not in your list. It's pretty easy. My phone just won't ring. They'll be sent to voice mail instead. In my voice mail greeting, it says that I won't listen to the voice mail, and if they're trying to get in touch with me, hang up and text me.
    • mathrawka 6y ago
      Yeah, that is great that iOS did that! They released that last summer I think. There are times that you do want anyone to call you, or you don't even want unknown callers to leave a voicemail. My friend's mother would freak out with every little thing always, including the voicemails from robotic voices saying their SSN will be invalid unless they call back at some weird number. So my friend got the app on her mother's phone and set it to the strictest mode, and her mom hasn't freaked out anymore. This only works because she uses her phone for talking with family members and a few doctor offices.
• codegeek 6y ago
  I know it is difficult for older/elderly/less tech savvy people but we have to keep trying to educate whoever we can. First, if someone asks you to make ANY payment through Gift cards, assume it is a scam and move on. Hang up. Even if tehy are claiming that you son/daughter just had an accident or was arrested. If you do get someone to tell you that your family member is arrested/in an accident and needs immediately help, tell them to txt you the address of where they are and you will take care of the rest. Hang up then. The Govt. never calls and asks for money on phone. They do call sometimes but will always send paper mail when it comes to money matters. If you are not sure, hang up and call back yourself after checking the legit number online through the main website. Never call a number that is from your voicemail etc.
• pwython 6y ago
  > "My dad is not a gullible man." This article attempts to blame Target a couple of times for not doing enough. But this guy was also sitting in another store's parking lot, Safeway, reading off gift card codes to the "DEA." No matter how smart you think your loved ones are, placing scrutiny on the stores the scammers have chosen (especially as a journalist) is going to do little except to add purchasing restrictions for everyone. A 17-year-old minimum wage cashier isn't going to save your dad, it's the last place to look to combat these "psychological tactics."
  • atomon 6y ago
    There's a reason these scammers choose gift cards as their preferred way to get your money: gift cards have become the easiest way to move large amounts of money while minimizing the chances of getting caught. Every other business that deals with the transfer of money (banks, for example) is expected to put strong measures in place to make sure that the money is traceable and that they're not helping criminals. Why shouldn't large companies like Target be held to a similar standard? Moreover, the incentives here are very worrying. Yes this guy got scammed out of $3k, but Target also got $3k in revenue. Without some sort of penalty/punishment, Target is incentivized to do the bare minimum to minimize their PR exposure (which they can do by saying "we take this very seriously and have adopted some new policies" but not really acting on it) but to otherwise allow this to keep happening. As the prevalence of these gift card scams has skyrocketed, so have gift card sales for these large companies.
    • boyesm 6y ago
      From what I understand, a retail store doesn’t make any profit selling gift cards for other stores. The Safeway in this story didn’t make any money off of that $2k purchase of Target cards and it could’ve saved/boosted its reputation if it had some better protective measures in place. It also means that maybe people who would’ve spent money at Safeway now can’t because they’ve lost several thousand dollars.
      • newacct583 6y ago
• Anthony-G 6y ago
  Excellent article – particularly for showing how powerful the limbic system is and how it can completely overwhelm the neocortex (logical, rational part of the brain) – a phenomenon referred to as amygdala hijack [1]. The article shows anyone could fall victim to such a scam – not just those who are stupid and/or greedy. I was also struck by how the article detailed – in addition to the monetary loss – the longer-term emotional consequences of being deceived by scammers. > My dad had received robocalls in the past and ignored them. But this one was different: it was a real, authoritative person on the line who knew his full name and address. Earlier, the article reported that scammers get this personal information from data brokers and it struck me that this is a reason why people should care about privacy and who they trust with their personal data. This data could end up being used against them – or their loved ones. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack
  • BLKNSLVR 6y ago
    > Earlier, the article reported that scammers get this personal information from data brokers and it struck me that this is a reason why people should care about privacy and who they trust with their personal data. This data could end up being used against them – or their loved ones. This is a key point worth mentioning in any "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" discussions about online tracking and the dangers of giving away private information to websites, big or small. Once the data is out there, it's available to any company with deep enough pockets to purchase it.
• fortran77 6y ago
  Target was too lazy to check all the gift cards to see if they were redeemed when he called them. 4 out of 6 weren't. That's outrageous. Target should be on the hook for any unredeemed cards from the time he called to report the scam. BTW: I recommend Maria Konnikova's book "The Confidence Game" https://www.amazon.com/Confidence-Game-Fall-Every-Time/dp/0143109871 https://www.amazon.com/Confidence-Game-Fall-Every-Time/dp/01...
• throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Leveraging these sorts of "I or someone in proximity to me did something dumb" stories into clicks/likes/virtue points just rubs me the wrong way. If I want to hear about how your grandma got phone scammed by Nigerian princes or how your coworker fell off a ladder because he neglected to follow safety proceure I want to hear it from someone with relevant professional experience and qualifications on the matter, not some internet rando who's looking to pimp out others misfortune for clicks. IMO that just adds insult to injury. And since I know this is an unwelcome opinion here would anyone care to tell me why I'm so wrong or why they disagree?
• aclatuts 6y ago
  I feel like it would help a lot to require cashiers or gift cards give warnings, something like, "gift cards should be bought for people you know and not as payment." Sort of like the "Don't drink and drive" at liquor stores. There are no legitimate businesses that take gift card payments. Even trading/buying gift cards locally is risky because one could take a picture of the gift card and use the code before the buyer.
  • reaperducer 6y ago
    I feel like it would help a lot to require cashiers or gift cards give warnings, something like, "gift cards should be bought for people you know and not as payment." Apple does this at its stores. I bought a gift card there just before the pandemic, and the clerk read me disclaimer text about scammers and gift cards, and then I had to sign the statement on his iPhone before I could pay.
• boyesm 6y ago
  The font on the sign warning about gift card scams seems pretty small. Given that most of the targets of these sort of scams are people who likely need reading glasses, these signs and the font should be bigger.
  • Keverw 6y ago
    I know some stores also put the warnings on the credit card machine you got to accept too. I know CVS does this, not sure others but people probably just tap away. I think they do that even if paying with cash, not sure...
• pain_perdu 6y ago
  My friend's 68 year old mother lost $118,000 to a similar scam: https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/consumer-alert-oceanside-woman-loses-119k-in-gift-card-scam/509-7478ed04-28c6-44a1-9488-adaed158e646 https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/consumer-alert-ocean... Fortunately, her daughter was able to recoup the funds from the banks.
  • missedthecue 6y ago
    Unreal. What is the thought process through which one thinks it is perfectly fine and reasonable to buy 6 figures in gift cards from a department store.
• aquabeagle 6y ago
  Seems like the FTC or some other government agency could save a lot of people a lot of heartache with a PSA targeted at elderly people. Commercials during daytime TV basically saying no one will ever legitimately call you and ask you to buy gift cards as a method of payment.
• djflutt3rshy 6y ago
  A lot of failures here: 1) Caller-ID spoofing. It straight out should not be possible to spoof government phone numbers, 911, etc. My Android has "Scam Likely" show up when a scammer calls (I believe this is part of the STIR/SHAKEN protocol), this should be expedited, expanded, and improved upon. 2) Someone should not be able to buy $3000 of Target gift cards without doing a lot of explaining. Personal experience: The grocery store I go to; the registers will straight out refuse to ring up above $500 of gift cards, you have to use the Customer Service desk where their agents grill you (and I do mean grill you, their default mode seems to be "You're being scammed", especially if you're on the phone with someone). 3) If I buy gift cards in New York, there's zero reason someone in Bangalore, India should immediately be able to redeem those gift cards. Perhaps Target could should spend some of their data collection techniques on this instead of trying to figure out if your daughter is pregnant so they can send you maternity coupons. 4) Is there a reason unused gift cards bought within a certain amount of time shouldn't be refundable?
  • ianwalter 6y ago
    I was thinking about #3 as well, but I was thinking that the scammers don't actually use the gift cards right? Don't they just re-sell them in order to launder them? I was also wondering, if you realize you've been scammed right afterwards, is there a process for reporting the numbers to the issuer so they can freeze them and try to refund the victim? I feel like that should be required somehow.
    • jonas21 6y ago
      According to the article, the laundering is done in the US: > Once the scammers obtain gift card numbers from a victim, they transfer them to a group of US-based “runners,” who liquidate and launder the funds — either by buying resellable goods at the store or selling them via gift card resale sites. Some even have their own gift card resale apps.
  • Spooky23 6y ago
    The whole gift card game is a big scam. Between lost cards, the obvious money laundering and tax avoidance grifts, etc, it's a pretty absurd instrument.
• mpap 6y ago
  This is an experience my parents experience on a regular basis. Unfortunately, my father, who used to be very tech savvy - worked for Control Data for all of his career - is suffering from mild dementia and my mother doesn't know up from down on the computer. My father still loves to sit at his computer putzing around but too often gets sucked into some kind of infomercial / scam. As an additional example, we were recently charged over $1800 of overage fees when my dad kept backing up his entire harddrive to a cloud service not really knowing what he was doing. It has gotten to the point where they really need me to assist them with all most everything related to managing their computers. Unfortunately I am 1000 miles away so we struggle on the phone to get things sorted out. What recommendations do people have for being able to remotely manage windows machines. I am on windows 10 and they are still using w7. I'd like to be able to remote into their machine with admin rights so I can manage software, finances, etc. thanks for any advice.
  • unnouinceput 6y ago
    VNC. Put a server on their computer and through a VPN you can safely do and show them what you meant. Or switch them to Linux. For browsing/mail it's perfect. And if they want to have Windows games then make a separate partition where they play there and cut access to internet for that Windows installation.
    • catalogia 6y ago
      > Or switch them to Linux. For browsing/mail it's perfect. My dad switched to Xubuntu a few years ago and has been singing praise of it ever since. It's a pretty straight forward desktop environment that isn't prone to frequent radical changes like some other DEs. I think it's an ideal DE for somebody with basic browsing/mail requirements.
      • walrus01 6y ago
        Seconding this. Literally 99% of what many old people need to do with a computer can be accomplished with xubuntu/xfce desktop environment (which is now a traditionally comfortable GUI similar to windows 98/2000), and inside a browser like Firefox. Install ublock origin and a few other common sense plugins.
• thrownaway954 6y ago
  i said this once before and it bears repeating... Ask HN: How do you protect your parents from tech scammers? simple... they call me first. if there is one thing i have _never_ done to my parents, or _anyone_ for that matter, is make fun of them if they call me and ask me for my professional opinion in tech matters. this has extended to situations when they think the situation is shoddy like they are being taken in a scam. i think _this_ is the single reason why my parents have never fell victim to scams. i feel that _most_ parents, or elderly people for that matter, fall victim cause they feel pressure from both ends... the first being the scammers themselves, the second being scared to ask _anyone_ if the situation is legit for fear of being made fun of. _noone_ should feel scared of being ridicule when asking any question regarding their safety or well-being.
  • tialaramex 6y ago
    Yup. My sister too. I had a text from her when I woke up the other day, she'd bought a new phone and now the company was asking weird questions. I figure for sure it's a scam and I phoned her immediately. But I gradually realised it's actually not what I thought. I normally buy phones by just... buying a phone, like a cheeseburger or a T-shirt, cash or card. But she's got a new phone on contract, so that's a credit deal and the questions they're asking, though prying, are credit agency ID confirm questions. Where you've lived, photo of a passport, stuff like that. The firm seems legit, they're not new to the business, they have a relationship to a Credit Reference Agency that I've worked with before, so it's probably fine. She seems reassured that I'd actually thought through why this might be OK, and so long as her new iPhone shows up in the next few days all is good, otherwise I guess I need to walk her through anti-fraud processes in case somebody got all that as precursor to taking out credit in her name. With my mother I got a call from her one day because her PC was literally screaming. She'd clicked a link or visited a web site or something and now it was constantly loudly demanding she phone the scammers and give them money to "unlock" it. She'd had the peace of mind to instead walk into another room and call me. I talked her through switching it off, bringing it up in safe mode and forgetting the (hijacked) default page on the browser. Relatively simple scam, but I expect it's effective on too many people.
    • 6y ago
• kirillcool 6y ago
  Retail stores make tons of money on gift cards - specifically, when people don't use the balance or lose them. See https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/10/3-billion-of-gift-cards-go-unused-each-year-dont-let-them-go-to-waste.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/10/3-billion-of-gift-cards-go-u.... It's like the stores are essentially minting their own money at this point. They have zero incentive to put "checks and balances" in place, unless they start losing money on it from some king of federal penalties tied to cases like the one in the article.
• foodigger 6y ago
  sorry
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• Areibman 6y ago
  This happened to my elderly neighbor last week. The scammers claimed to be from Apple, ran a fake script, did the whole jig and dance, and demanded immediate payment. She lost $8,000. These scammers are relentless and abusive. They're still harassing her even 1 week later. I'm shocked that Target just simply allows people to purchase so much in gift cards all at once. I'm even more shocked that banks and transaction processors don't mark this as suspicious or fraudulent. But this isn't just a function of irresponsible companies. The elderly are overwhelmed by technology, and it's too difficult to know what's real and what isn't. After the scam, my neighbor had a near panic attack when she received an innocuous Google security checkup email. How was she supposed to know it was authentic or not?
  • flamtap 6y ago
    About the purchase of large amounts of gift cards; it’s not as uncommon as you’d think. I worked at a grocery store customer service office and it wasn’t uncommon to have people buy thousands of dollars in gift cards as giveaways or prizes for events. No questions asked, really. The store was very eager to pocket that money. There should certainly be more checks and balances around that. Perhaps a personal limit, and requiring a registered business to be the purchaser above that. Or perhaps a redemption system. But the incentive is not there for the stores. It’s of course better to sell gift cards than the equal amount of merchandise for them
  • megablast 6y ago
    You can’t but that many without getting a talking to from Target.
• downshun 6y ago
  Shoot the scammers
• cvg 6y ago
  If you’re in a store and see someone acting odd with gift cards, it’s ok to say something and try to help out. I recently encountered an elderly woman fiddling with some purchased gift cards (at CVS) while talking to someone on her cell phone. They threatened to disconnect her power immediately if she didn’t pay for a new meter immediately. Luckily I convinced her to not share the numbers and hang up on the scammer. It took her a while to even trust me. Poor woman had no idea who to trust. I had her call the local utility who was super patient explaining the situation and consoling her.
• wmeredith 6y ago
  I want to the script on how to convince a rational thinking person that paying the government in Target gift cards is a thing. That's nuts.
  • phaus 6y ago
    Its not that people are dumb, they usually target the elderly. Senility is a real thing that can happen to anyone no matter how smart they were when they were young.
• thehashrocket 6y ago
  I'm a big fan of kitboga, he's got a twitch and youtube channel. The scammers constantly ask for gift cards. It's amazing to listen to, especially when you think about the vulnerable segments of our population who fall for these scams. There's websites where you can buy "used" gift cards and I wonder how many of these are cards from scammers that are now turning them over for cash.
• golem14 6y ago
  https://egbg.home.xs4all.nl/counterscript.html https://egbg.home.xs4all.nl/counterscript.html has a decent resource on how to handle these kinds of calls (if you choose to engage at all). One should really have a printout ready to use at all times.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• umvi 6y ago
  What kinds of people are running these scams? Are they just normal Indians that think they are playing "Robin Hood" with the rich Americans? I would like to see "a day in the life of an Indian scammer"... are these scammers poor and/or desperate? Are they desensitized psychopaths? Are they mainly teenagers who think it is a game? Are they adults who are fully aware of how criminal their acts are?
  • zevyoura 6y ago
    There's a great episode of the podcast "Reply All" which digs into some of these questions: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/6nh3wk/ https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/6nh3wk/
  • gmanis 6y ago
    They are most likely young adults who while probably know they are doing something wrong don’t know the significant impact on the people they end up causing. Yes, very likely poor, desperate and also under duress by their “managers” to meet their quotas. It doesn’t absolve them of their sins though. The system might even be gamified for these callers and they lose sense of their own morality at some point if they have any. This scam has been going for so long yet the authorities don’t seem to be doing enough either in US or here in India. I wish someone powerful enough takes this scam head-on and uproot the whole system. It really preys upon one of the most vulnerable members of our society and we should collectively do something about it. /rant
• Gunax 6y ago
  How about not redeeming gift cards for 24 hours? Basically gift cards are unspendable the same day they are purchased, giving people q day to cancel. I would think most legitimate gift cards are not spent the same day they are purchased.
  • paultopia 6y ago
    this seems like a very sensible idea, and easy to implement via legislation---make the companies liable for all losses if they violate
• paultopia 6y ago
  Psychology aside, I find it really difficult to understand how someone rationalizes to themselves the idea that some government official calling them wants gift cards to pay their fine, or restitution, or any other legitimate payment. I mean, I wish I could pay my taxes in gift cards---you can often buy them at a discount! Maybe they convince themselves that the supposed law enforcement officer is actually asking for a bribe?
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    For many immigrants, it seems quite probable that they came from countries where bribery is totally normal every day behavior, so it is plausible that it might not be much of a stretch for them.
• megablast 6y ago
  > My dad is not a gullible man I don’t think you get to say that anymore. It is hard to judge the people we know correctly, but of the many steps, thinking the government would want payment immediately in gift cards must be the biggest gullible jump.
  • tfe 6y ago
    > thinking the government would want payment immediately in gift cards But this is not what happened.
    • megablast 6y ago
      > According to Grubbs, there was only one way out: my dad had to convert the money to “government certified gift vouchers,” or gift cards. Yes it is.
      • tfe 6y ago
        My understanding is that the father was paying off a corrupt individual agent, not making payment to any government agency.
        • cmckn 6y ago
          Isn't that just as ridiculous of a notion? A DEA agent shaking down an identify theft victim for Target gift cards, calling from a government phone? It's a hell of a yarn, no matter how you read it.
          • perl4ever 6y ago
            No? You're saying that someone shouldn't have believed that one kind of scam was happening, because only the other kind of scam is real. That's a much more subtle distinction than just "payment in gift cards is a scam". It also doesn't seem like a thing that can really be supported with definitive evidence or authoritative decree.
• rdiddly 6y ago
  Whether you're dealing with actual law enforcement or someone pretending, the procedure is the same: Say nothing, tell your lawyer and wait patiently to be arrested. Assuming it's real, it's the action of a court, and court proceedings are routine, slow, procedural, and consist of paperwork. And somebody has to show up physically with a warrant. For chrissakes, make them work a little for it. If they can cow you without even getting up from their chair, you're making it too easy. This just happens to deflect scammers too.
• acomjean 6y ago
  People want to believe. I got a voice mail from the IRS literally days after I got a letter from them. It was hard not to panic, and google the number.. Then I get chinese phone scam voicemails all the time. Its clever because I can't understand them, but if I was a Chinese speaker, it would seem like it was for me. I like to think I'm savy, but these tales serve as a cautionary guide..
  • cortesoft 6y ago
    My solution is to never answer or listen to voicemails from unknown numbers. The system works, except when my kids are at school and my paranoia makes me assume every call is about them.
• syshum 6y ago
  My question is how was he even able to do spend that much in one day? did he spread it out over several accounts or something? Or did he pay cash he had under his mattresses? I have all my accounts locked down to a reasonable daily spending limit (far lower than $3,000) , if I have a large expense then I have to call my credit union or credit card company to to a temporarily increase on that spending limit. Also why do people still answer unknown numbers. I NEVER answer a number that is not in my phone already. If I don't know you, you can leave a message and I might call you back maybe (unlikely)
• chiph 6y ago
  Dad got taken for $300 from the fake "Microsoft Support" people. And then had to pay a local firm to fix & remove all the stuff they changed when he allowed them remote access. He was a smart man. But as he got older he would lose patience with websites and just click on anything .. ANYTHING to get the popups to go away. Which had the inevitable result. This is despite me telling him not to do that. And if his computer started acting up, just mail it to me and I'd reload it for him. But he didn't want to "be a bother" and his pride meant he would refuse to admit to himself that he had been taken. Talk to your parents, be patient and explain it's not a bother, that everyone eventually gets affected by the scammers. And that you're more than willing to help them.
• pengaru 6y ago
  > My dad is not a gullible man. He grew up low-income at the border of Brooklyn and Queens, where street smarts were a survival mechanism. A 30-year career teaching high school students trained him to sniff out bullshit from a mile away. Your dad was not a gullible man. My dad was a very aggressive and assertive person throughout his life, didn't trust anyone, lived through some very hard times like post-war Italy where apparently even the feral cats vanished for lack of food. Then in retirement it's like everything experienced which conditioned him to be that way just faded away. His edge dulled substantially. The last time I traveled with him we were approached by someone on the streets of Palermo who was obviously (to me) sizing us up. Within minutes of talking with this total stranger my dad had revealed where both his money and passport were kept on his person. I had to abruptly intervene and remove us from the situation by insisting we enter the restaurant we happened to be passing. When I explained to him what had just transpired, he was in complete disbelief at how easily he had been tricked. The whole thing surprised me because my dad was the one objecting to our exploring the south of Italy the entire trip because of the crime and poverty! Even with him expecting we were going to have such problems he didn't catch it. A previous version of my father would have not only seen it coming, he likely would have escalated it with violence, he's a gruff old Italian sailor. This was like taking candy from a child. It's incredible how much people change in old age.
  • tropdrop 6y ago
    In regards to this topic, the "gullible" line of thought misses the forest for the trees, because it still operates in the mode of "it was your personal responsibility [to not be scammed], and if you were, it is because you were gullible." This means the elderly are particularly vulnerable, as per your account, but it also means that there's less inclination to push for change and protection against scams like this from the general public in America. (I feel that in other cultures, such as Japan, the elderly tend to be regarded with respect for their wisdom rather than derision of their "regressing" minds). My anecdotal story to the contrary of yours: I have a friend who graduated from a top 10 US college a few years ago and couldn't find a job. Right when they were desperately filing for applications and feeling very worried about their future (as recent college graduates are wont to do), this person received a call from 911 that fell exactly into this class: >Impersonations of government employees accounted for ~60% of these cases. The "911" was from the local police department of the city where they lived. The person was told that a warrant for their arrest has been issued - that 3 years before, there was a particular document to be filed with the IRS that had to declare all scholarship money awarded for a particular scholarship, and according to their documents, that document is three years overdue and has already incurred $700 in fines. The amount of time elapsed since the due date warranted x many jail days without immediate payment, and a mark on the criminal record... additionally, since this involves defrauding the government, their freshly minted university degree was about to be revoked. My friend is an immigrant. They didn't know that university degrees couldn't be revoked, nor that no such thing as "government vouchers" bought from a grocery store existed (this was the trick - when the person arrives looking for the vouchers at Target or Office Depot, the agent on the phone says that some gift card can be an acceptable form of payment instead). I took note of this scam both because of how elaborate it was, how believable it was (especially to someone less than familiar with the US government), how the person on the "911" call used psychological tactics to continue to make this vulnerable person more and more panicked about their future particularly at a time when they were already financially insecure. My friend was not gullible. But my friend did fear repercussions from the US government enough to completely fall for this scam.
• gbraad 6y ago
  Support people like Jim Browning who identified and goes after scammers, and Kitboga who, although more show, eats there time and does there tactics.
• subaru_shoe 6y ago
  ”My dad is not a gullible man” -yes he is. who would think a law enforcement agency would want target gift cards?
• ycombonator 6y ago
  These people are from India who say they are from IRS and usually target seniors.
• malwarebytess 6y ago
  I don't understand how someone could believe a federal agent wanted to be paid in target gift cards. Why would any official, for any reason, request gift cards as payment? Cognitive decline must surely play a role here.
• alacombe 6y ago
  Happened to me twice in the past couple of weeks (minus the "being scammed" part). Once claiming to be from the CRA (Canadian's IRS), and once obvious fake impersonating the IRS on a text app. In both case, the initial message was a text-to-speech intro which claim to be followed up to an "agent"... I guess to filter out the large amount of people hanging the call.
• electro_blah 6y ago
  Shout-out to scambaiters like Kitboga, ScammerRevolts, Jim Browning and Lewis's Tech. you can find their videos on YouTube. jim browning recently closed down one of the scam call centers with the help of Karl Rock (popular vloger in India) and ofc Indian police. they also arrested the owner.
• zmix 6y ago
  What still escapes me, even after reading the article: What dots do you need to connect to feel it is totally neccessary to buy gift-cards for the FBI?
• neom 6y ago
  If you're in the mood to watch something pretty sad, check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1Bu034pGdc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1Bu034pGdc - This group goes around scam busting, in this instance they end up at the house of an old lady who has been scammed, it's pretty crazy.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• raldi 6y ago
  Just like the post office asks if your package contains anything hazardous, and the liquor store asks to see ID, you shouldn’t be able to buy a gift card without being asked, “Did someone you’ve never met tell you to do this?”
• neskiredk 6y ago
  Was rudely interupted half-way through the article. Shame i wasnt allowed to finish reading it due to overlays upon overlays.
• dorkwood 6y ago
  Why don't we just ban gift cards? They're a scam by themselves, anyway.
• sylvainr65 6y ago
  Greet post, thanks!