Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
TL;DR
- A growing street phone scam in New York City is defrauding victims of significant sums of money, with over $76,000 stolen last year.
- Criminals request a seemingly legitimate donation via transfer, after which they claim it didn’t go through.
- Offering to assist, the perpetrator takes the victim’s phone and transfers a large amount of cash to a different account.
It’s worth being aware of the latest methods scammers are using to part people with their money, and a simple yet novel street phone scam appears to be on the rise in New York City. In a form of digital mugging, the thieves convince people on the street to hand over their phones so that the perpetrator can transfer funds out of the victim’s account.
As detailed in Gothamist reporting, police officers in the SoHo area of the city have been handing out fliers to raise awareness of how the scam is typically performed. The scammer approaches the victim on the street or in a park and requests a donation, posing as a legitimate fundraiser for a sports team, school, or non-profit.
Once the victim agrees to make a cash transfer via an app such as Venmo, Cash App, or Zelle, the scammer will claim that the donation wasn’t received and offer to assist by performing the donation on the victim’s phone. Instead of making the agreed nominal donation to a real cause, the criminal will use the moment they have access to the victim’s payment app to withdraw a large sum.
The NYPD says scammers used this ploy to steal more than $76,000 from dozens of people in Manhattan and Brooklyn last year. The majority of victims were women, and the amounts stolen in each case ranged from $928 to $3,500. According to the police, many of the swindlers are from New Jersey.
As with the majority of scams, many of us instinctively think we wouldn’t be caught in the same situation. Nevertheless, you should always be vigilant and never allow someone you don’t trust to have access to your funds.
