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Free Republic 4th Quarter Fundraising Target: $88,000 | Receipts & Pledges to-date: $88,010 | |
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| Woo hoo!! OVER THE TOP!! Congratulations everyone and thank you all very much!! God bless. | |||
Posted on 12/23/2019 9:28:50 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Holly Kay bought eight $1,000 Macy’s gift cards at a California mall because a scammer told her to on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Forty minutes later, she bought $13,000 more in gift cards at that store.
The ease with which Ms. Kay was able to complete those purchases underscores the growing popularity of gift cards among scammers seeking quick, hard-to-trace ways to take money from their victims.
Buying multiple gift cards is often easier than initiating a wire transfer, because the cards are easily purchased and the numbers can be sent instantly by phone or text message to a fraudster who might otherwise have to wait for a large bank transaction to clear, law-enforcement officials say.
The gift cards Ms. Kay, 68 years old, purchased at Macy’s Inc. were among nearly 120 that she bought from several retailers in one week, as part of a scam in which a fraudster told her she was helping catch a hacker who had compromised her home computer.
At the fraudster’s direction, she also spent $19,000 in one hour on gift cards at a Nordstrom store. The scammer remained on the phone with her for most of the transactions and at times had remote control of her computer, coaching her on how to answer cashier questions about why she was buying the gift cards.
Gift cards sold by large retailers are increasingly used by scammers in all flavors of fraud, including robocallers impersonating government officials or online criminals pretending to be a person’s employer, law-enforcement officials say. How companies respond to scammers’ embrace of their gift cards varies widely.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
It's behind a so-called paywall.
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Free Republic 4th Quarter Fundraising Target: $88,000 | Receipts & Pledges to-date: $88,010 | |
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| Woo hoo!! OVER THE TOP!! Congratulations everyone and thank you all very much!! God bless. | |||
My CC companies are pretty good at denying payment for thing that they see as out of the ordinary base on my past.
But nothing is fool proof.
What a shame.
Merry Christmas, all, in case I don't get back in here before then.
It’s easier to just get them gift cards than to shop for them.
THANK YOU for the tip.
SO MUCH easier!!
That’s mostly what we exchange now, it seems like, in my family :)
80 percent of the gifts I give are cards now.
They’re gifts that actually get used lol
People who scam the elderly/mentally infirm should be shot.
And the scammers love them! They used to hate the sweaters I mailed them. Always the wrong size!
you bet
They should be fed feet-first into a live woodchipper.
I think I’m good with that.
I use USAA also. They are very very good at keeping an eye on my account. Also, they do not charge for stop payments on debit cards.
ROFL!!
Well they’re people too :)
Does that include politicians? They’ve been scamming people for centuries. Bribing people with their own money.
Verizon charges $7 for permission to speak with a human!
Bookmarklets - Get around paywalls, Fancy text for FB, Legal hacking tricks made easy!
Another good scam baiter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D61IKco8iGU
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