Greg's Corner

New Cash App scam drains man’s bank account

Cash App can be a great resource for people who have been historically underserved by traditional banks. However, it is also open to an inordinate amount of scams. This leaves Cash App users in a particularly vulnerable position when they could use better support from Cash App.

A man from Raleigh, North Carolina is a landlord and allows his tenants to pay through Cash App. After collecting the rent from his tenants, he had over $20,000 in his Cash App account. He wanted to transfer the money out of his Cash App and he received a call from someone claiming to be from Cash App customer service. The caller gave the man directions on how to transfer his money out but in reality, they were instructing the man to give scammers his money. Not only that but they also raided his bank account which was connected to his Cash App account. Before it was all said and done, the man lost close to $25,000.

What you may not know is that Cash App does not have a customer service department that can be reached by phone and they don’t randomly reach out to users of the app. In the past, we have seen instances where people have called what they thought was a customer service number they found online only to be scammed out of their money. This is the first instance we’re aware of where the scammers reached out to a Cash App user first.

Even after being contacted by a local news station, Cash App didn’t appear to be much help. It seems like all they did was to issue a statement saying essentially ‘people should be more careful’. The man who lost his money stated that when he was in contact with Cash App customer service, they were no help in trying to get his money back.

Cash App doesn’t seem to have any good system in place to protect consumers from fraudulent charges. On its own help page, it says to wait until the transaction is marked as complete, then contact the merchant to dispute the charge. But Cash App makes it too easy for the scammers to just block the person they just scammed.