Greg's Corner

Rideshare driver gets scammed out of account

By Greg Collier

Rideshare services like Lyft and Uber have been used in countless scams before. For example, many grandparent scammers use them as a sort of courier service to pick up the money from their victims. We’ve even seen some rideshare drivers using shady tactics to get more money out of their passengers, even though we understand that is not representative of all drivers. However, the drivers themselves are also vulnerable to scams, and we’re not talking about passengers trying to cheap out on a fare.

A Lyft driver in Denver, Colorado, was on duty when she received a text message that appeared to come from Lyft. The text listed a phone number the sender wanted the driver to call. When the driver called the number, she was greeted by someone claiming to be a Lyft representative.

The supposed representative told the driver a passenger had accused her of smelling like alcohol while working, and they were going to disable her app while they verified her account information. The caller took the driver’s phone number, date of birth, and driver’s license number for verification purposes.

When the caller told the driver, they cleared her of the accusation, they sent her an authorization code that was supposed to get the driver back on the Lyft app. What the authorization code was really for was so the scammers could put their debit card on the driver’s Lyft account. This allowed them to cash out the driver’s account, which cost the driver close to $500.

Now, you might be asking, how does this affect you, since you’re probably not a rideshare driver. Well, this could happen to anyone who works what is called a ‘gig economy’ job. You could receive a phone call claiming to be from the host platform saying there is something wrong with your account that could delay your payment. If you receive a phone call like that, tell them you’ll call them back, and check directly with the platform, itself. Most if not all gig economy apps should have a feedback link where you can contact the company.