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  Geebo 9:00 am on December 23, 2022 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: bail scam ( 15 ), cash, grandparent scam ( 69 ), mail ( 2 ), Scams ( 1,354 )   

  Scam victim gets money back in time for Christmas 

  

  By Greg Collier

  Due to the subject material we largely deal with at this blog, we don’t have many stories with happy endings. However, thanks to the season and law enforcement, we have a happy ending to bring you today just in time for the holiday weekend.

  Earlier this year, A Nebraska grandmother lost over $50,000 to the grandparent scam. For any new readers who might be joining us, the grandparent scam is where scammers target the elderly is a scam where the scammers pose as one of the victim’s grandchildren. In this case, the scammers told the grandmother that her grandson was involved in a car crash and needed the $50,000 for bail.

  The grandmother was instructed to send the supposed bail money in cash through the mail and a courier service like UPS or FedEx. As we have previously mentioned, no law enforcement agency or legitimate business will have you send cash through mail or overnight delivery.

  Apparently, one of the boxes of cash sent through the mail was sent to Massachusetts, as the grandmother recently received $25,000 back from the Boston Police Department. Thankfully, the payment was made by check. The family of the victim was also able to recover $4000 sent through the courier service. The remaining money has yet to be recovered.

  How is this a happy ending, you may ask? Most scam victims never get anything back. Too many elderly scam victims have lost everything due to scams. To recover over 50% of the money lost is a win in our book.

  This grandmother should also be thanked, as many victims of not just the grandparent scam are afraid to come forward due to embarrassment. That is their right, however, thanks to the victims that come forward, we can learn more about the scams and how to prevent them in the future.

  If you receive a call from someone claiming to be a relative, and they need money for bail or some other dire emergency, ask them a question only that person would know. Or you can also set up a code word with your family only to be used in emergencies. Lastly, call someone to verify the caller’s story. A scammer will tell you not to tell anyone else, but that’s a trick to keep anyone else in the victim’s family from finding out about the scam. Scammers will also try to keep you on the phone, so you can’t talk to anyone else in your family. Hang up and verify their story. No grandchild ever got extra jail time for their grandparents hanging up on them.

   

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  Geebo 9:00 am on December 22, 2022 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Amazon ( 108 ), Bank of America ( 11 ), cash, customer service ( 50 ), Scams ( 1,354 )   

  Never send cash through the mail for any reason 

  

  By Greg Collier

  Many of us probably got a delivery from Amazon in the past week or so. These deliveries will no doubt bring joy to our loved ones for the holidays. One Florida woman was almost not so lucky, as scammers posing as Amazon tried to bamboozle her in a convoluted scam.

  First, she received a phone call from someone claiming to be from Amazon. They told her a $1500 item was being shipped out under her account. She probably told the fake Amazon rep that she didn’t order anything. She was then transferred to someone posing as an agent of the Federal Trade Commission, complete with badge number. That person transferred her to another person posing as her bank, in this case, Bank of America.

  The woman was then told by the phony bank rep that her identity has been compromised, but the only way to clear it up was to hire a lawyer or pay the bank $15,000. They told her if she didn’t comply, she would be arrested. If she told anyone what was happening, the scammers said they would be arrested too.

  She was told to mail boxes of cash, but after she made a second withdrawal, the scammers told her that they needed to her to buy stuff for them. Thankfully, she realized it was a scam at this point, and she did not lend up losing any money. But look how close she came.

  While the scammers in this case tipped their hand, there are some classic tenets of scams in this one. The first one if the call from Amazon. Amazon rarely ever calls their customers. If you’ve ever received a legitimate call from Amazon, that’s winning the lottery type odds. The second is threatening someone with arrest if they don’t comply with the scammers demands. Normally, this is done when scammers pose as police, but police don’t threaten arrest for payment over the phone and neither do banks. If a business were to threaten a customer with arrest, that would be a PR disaster for that business. They also tried to keep the victim from talking to anyone else. This is usually seen in grandparent scam when phony police say there’s a gag order against you. That’s not how gag orders work. They only apply to when a case is in the process of going to trial. They can’t just be ordered against random citizens.

  Mailing a box of cash is also an old way that scammers try to collect money from their victims. There is no legitimate reason to send large amounts of cash through the mail. No law enforcement agency or legitimate business will ask you to send them cash through the mail.

  Video: Jupiter woman nearly loses thousands in scam, but recognizes red flags

   
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  Geebo 8:00 am on September 20, 2019 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Amazon ( 108 ), cash, retail ( 49 ), Western Union ( 3 )   

  Amazon accepts cash: What this means for you 

  

  In many ways, we are moving to a cashless society. Whether it’s payment apps like Venmo or cashless banking in general, many consumers no longer carry cash on them. While this is an inevitable outcome with the march of modern technology it does have the consequence of alienating those in our country who may not have access to banking. That’s why it came as a surprise that the nation’s largest online retailer has started to accept cash as a form of payment.

  Amazon has partnered with Western Union to start accepting cash payments for goods sold on Amazon. It works by the customer being issued a QR code once they indicate their intent to pay by cash. The customer can then go to any Western Union outlet, show them the QR code and then pay Amazon with cash. This is somewhat a shocking turn of events for Amazon as previously they wanted to go cash only in their mostly automated Amazon Go stores.

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMNKqT5UvTM%5D

  While this opens up a whole new market for Amazon there is a potential downside to this new enterprise. The first is that many Western Union outlets are in the brick and mortar locations of some of Amazon’s competitors. This could lead to these competitors no longer doing business with Amazon which in turn would leave less Western Union outlets which many consumers depend on. The other problem is that we can already see the potential for this service being abused by scammers. One example is when scammers try to get you to pay for something using gift cards. Now, they could possibly use the Amazon QR codes instead of gift cards for their scams.

  While this is great for those who live on a cash-only basis, they should always be on the lookout for the potential pitfalls of such a service.