Today I wanted to tell a particular scam story, which I was reminded of by this scammers writing competition by @swissclive.

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A Call From a Victim

One night, my wife and I were with a group of friends, sitting at a restaurant enjoying a nice pizza. My wife got a call from a friend, and it sounded fairly serious. After the call, my wife told us that her friend, let's call her Sally, was nearly in tears. Sally recently got a call from the IRS, and was worried sick because they told her that she had misfiled her taxes. Being a non-permanent resident, Sally was also worried that she might lose her current status here. Continuing on, my wife described how Sally was feeling a bit better after being offered help for a sum of money, and that someone would be coming by to help correct the problem.

Uh oh...

The warning bells were ringing loudly in my head, and I immediately responded by saying that she just got scammed. My wife looked at me with uncertainty at first, asking how I knew. I said that the IRS does not call people like that, and that I read about such IRS scams before. I told her to immediately call her back and ask for details.

Sally also seemed uncertain. She was so focused on the possibility of losing her status or going to jail that she was not thinking clearly. This was when we found out the crazy details. The scammer had told her not to hang up the phone or else risk facing the penalty, and also gave specific instructions to purchase two Target gift cards worth 500$ each. Not only that, the gift cards must be purchased from two different Target stores. She used her debit card to make the purchases, and was frantically hailing a cab to get to a second store, all while on the phone with the scammer.

As she recounted this story, my heart sank. I also was screaming inside my head. This is terrible! And to think she must have been so on edge to not suspect a thing. This is exactly the psychological trigger that scammers prey on, and why the scams have been fairly successful. I could feel her playing this back in her head and starting to realize what just happened. Devastation...

We racked our heads for possible solutions. The immediate course of action at the time was a suggestion to file a police report and try to contact the card companies for a way to nullify the transaction possibly. She paid with debit card, and authorized it, so I wasn't so optimistic about those prospects. The police simply laughed her off: nothing they could do.

An Act of Hope

About two hours later, and I am cursing myself for not thinking of it sooner, I realized that she should try to nullify the gift cards, since she knows the gift card codes. Sally gave me the two codes over the phone, and I looked them up on the Target website. I entered the first code, and it showed that there were no funds left. Of course they would drain the funds as soon as possible. What a terrible scam. I entered the second code, and that's when I saw a balance of 500 dollars still on the card.

There's hope! My blood was already boiling with anger, but now there was a hopeful rush of adrenaline. I found the section where I could contact customer service. Thank goodness it was 24/7. I called on her behalf, and told the agent the situation, that Sally was tricked into buying the gift cards. The agent was able to cancel and refund one of the gift cards to the original debit card before it was drained by the scammer. Just like that, 500$ was recovered, and I was very happy that it worked.

I called Sally and told her the good news, and she was extremely grateful. Still very much shaken, but happy to cut the loss in half. I also suggested that perhaps she could call the debit card and tell them that the purchases were not made on her behalf, but we were not sure if that would work or not. She didn't want to risk doing so, so that was it.

The Scam

This is the kind of scam you hear on the news and wonder how people would ever fall for it. But it's unfortunately something many people fall victim to, and it was quite disheartening to see this happen to someone who was hit quite hard by it financially. Summarizing what happened, this particular variant of the scam worked as follows:

1. Scammer calls victim and claims that their tax was filed incorrectly, and that the penalty is severe, possibly involving jail time.
2. They offer to help for a fee of 1000$, and that a representative will come by to guide them through the process.
3. They request the victim to buy two gift cards of 500$ each and tell them the redemption codes over the phone.

All the while, they keep up the panic of the victim and keep them on the phone as much as possible to complete the task.

This was certainly very obvious in hind sight, and that really just makes it feel much worse. You might be wondering why the victim needs to buy two different gift cards of 500$ each, and I looked it up later. It seems that the limitation is set by the store and is exactly for preventing this kind of scam. And now I wonder what the cashier who rang this charge up thought, or if anyone else was in the line... Fantasizing about whether it could have been stopped while in progress. Not in this city, New York, where people mind their own business.

This whole thing also reminds me of a particular Japanese manga called Liar's Game which at one point explains how phone scams work psychologically. It's a really brilliant story about a very innocent, trusting young woman, ensared in a sinister game of deception, and is helped by a genius swindler to turn the game around.

But anyway, hope more people can be aware of such scams. Just remember, the IRS doesn't call you by phone, and they certainly don't want gift cards.

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