Greg's Corner

Walmart sued over money transfer scams

By Greg Collier

Before Zelle and cryptocurrency became all the rage among scammers, money transfer services were in vogue. In many of the scams we’ve detailed over the years, money transfer services like Western Union and MoneyGram were used to extort money out of scam victims. This was done because once a scammer collects the money from a money transfer location, they can disappear into the wind. This meant that once a scam victim sent their money to a scammer through one of these services, the money was gone and could not be recouped.

This did not go unnoticed by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC sued both MoneyGram and Western Union for failure to protect their customers from scams and frauds. Both services were ordered to pay restitution to scam victims. As expected, the losses of both companies ended up being in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Now, the FTC has gone after the one company that has a MoneyGram or Western Union in each of its locations. That would be the retail giant Walmart. The FTC is suing Walmart, claiming the retail chain also did not do enough to protect their customers from money transfer scams. Walmart is accused of turning a blind eye to scams while collecting money for the transfer fees. In its complaint, the FTC claims Walmart did not properly train its employees and failed to adequately warn consumers of the dangers of using money transfers. The FTC is looking to have Walmart also pay restitution to scam victims.

To be fair, when we do post about scams that involve money transfers, the victim is almost always instructed to use one of the services at a Walmart.

In its defense, Walmart claims that the FTC has overreached its boundaries, considering they’ve already won lawsuits against both MoneyGram and Western Union for their failure to prevent fraud.

What do you think? Is Walmart responsible for allowing scams to happen, or has the FTC done enough already? Please let us know in the comments.