PEORIA, Ill. — The coronavirus pandemic has provided a perfect breeding ground the past 12 months for so many scams.
Jessica Tharp, with the Better Business Bureau of Peoria,
told WMBD’s “The Greg and Dan Show” on Thursday that many older scams have made a come back…like gift card payment scams.
One of the most popular scams out now is the “tech support scam”.
“They’ll say, you have a virus on your computer…and we can take care of it. But, we need you to go put x number of dollars on a Green Dot card, or an Amazon card or an i-Tunes card,” Tharp said.
The scammer takes the money off the gift card, but obviously doesn’t fix your computer.
Another popular scam during the pandemic has been the “puppy scam”… where scammers post pictures of puppies on social media, puppies that don’t exist, and tell consumers that they must pay for the pet up front with a gift card.
Tharp adds, if you’re on the phone with a business and they request payment with a gift card, it’s definitely a scam.
“The average loss on an individual gift card scam is about $700, totaling $2.9 million lost on gift card scams in 2020,” Tharp said.
According to the BBB, 36% of gift cards people receive have nothing on them, because the cards have been wiped clean by scammers before they ever arrive.
For more information from the Better Business Bureau, click HERE.
