Greg's Corner

Cash App scams are on the rise

If you’ve never heard of Cash App, it’s a payment app in the vein of other apps like PayPal and Venmo. It’s generally supposed to be used between friends and family to easily send them money. In order to better market their business, Cash App has giveaways that they call ‘Cash App Friday’ that use the hashtag #CashAppFridays on social media. The giveaways from Cash App and their parent company Square have been reported as being from around $100-$500. Many Cash App users have been bailed out of some serious financial situations from Cash App’s giveaways but whenever someone does good there are always those looking to take advantage of the situation.

With the current ongoing crisis, many people are finding themselves in dire straits financially. Some are willing to grasp at any glimpse of hope for a way out of their circumstance. That’s where the Cash App scammers come in. On social media, they’ll post that they’ll give you money through Cash App if you just pay them a lesser amount. For example, a scammer may promise to pay you $500 if you give them $50 through Cash App. As you might expect, once the scammer has your money the victim receives nothing in return. This practice is known as ‘cash flipping’ but in reality, nothing is flipped. The scammers will use the #CashAppFridays hashtag to find victims for their scam. To make matters worse, the Cash App scammers are now using hashtags related to the coronavirus pandemic to try to lure in even more victims.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8nqp7Eq7O4%5D

As we have said before, this scam is akin to handing your money to a stranger on the street who promised you $50 for $5. You wouldn’t do it then so why give your money to strangers on the internet? As much as we’d like to believe that there are wealthy good samaritans online looking to help the little guy, the reality is there aren’t. While the amounts lost by victims may seem small, that might have been their next meal for their family or gas in their car. These apps should only be used for exchanging money between friends and family and not random people online promising you money.

(H/T Quartz)