Gift Card Online Scam: Who Are You Paying?
Have you ever received a voicemail or text message from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) informing you that you owe taxes and the only way to pay them is to give the agency an electronic gift card? Perhaps a state trooper contacts you to inform you that you owe hundreds of dollars in speeding tickets and the only way to have them removed from your record is to call in the numbers from an Amazon gift card to pay your fines. Ignore such calls, emails, or texts if you get them. They're both forms of gift card fraud, in which crooks dupe victims into giving them online gift cards or having them recite the numbers on the back of a gift card over the phone. Fortunately, recognizing and avoiding various sorts of gift card frauds isn't difficult. Here are some of the most frequent gift card scammers, as well as the actions you can take to prevent being a victim. HOW GIFT CARD FRAUDS WORK? The perpetrators of these scams use high-pressure methods to get victims to hand up gift cards....