A couple weeks ago, I received an email from a good friend in Big Sandy asking me for an urgent favor. The letter explained a series of unfortunate events involving a last minute gift, an illness, laryngitis (which made it so I couldn’t call for confirmation of the story), and a cancer patient who needed $400 in Apple gift cards from her. The favor involved me purchasing the cards and sending the information on to facilitate the gift giving process. Despite having come from my friend’s email address, it didn’t read like it had been written from her and bore many of the marks of a scam email. The obvious next step was to text message a screenshot to my friend to see if it was real or the result of a hacked email account. Within minutes, the reply came, “I think I’ve been hacked. Definitely a scam.”

The email was an example of a growing problem across the country that is having an impact on residents of Chouteau County. According to the McAfee blog, in the second half of last year, there was a 50% increase in gift card scams reported in the United States. By September of last year, 29,000 cases of fraud were reported and over $147 million dollars were lost by ordinary citizens.

I spoke with Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremy Echols about the scam. “It is a thing that we are regularly seeing on average a couple of times a week. We get calls asking: ‘Hey, is this a legit thing?’ Most people recognize it as a scam, but there are a few times a year that we have where people actually get duped by it. They end up losing a lot of money or having to go and change all their banks and open new credit card accounts. They basically start over from scratch. That’s a lot of work to do. At the very least, it’s a very unnecessary headache, if not a much bigger issue when people you know get scammed out of quite a bit of money.”

Jeremy spoke with me about the sophisticated nature of these scams, whether they are phone calls, emails, or text messages posing as representatives of the bank, government agencies, friends, or local businesses. “Generally it’s getting harder and harder to tell whether they’re a scam because they have computer technology. They can actually use a legitimate number and say they are with DISH Network. It comes up on the caller ID as DISH Network and or whatever, but it isn’t. A lot of people think ‘Oh, It must be a problem with my credit card payment.’ Most people don’t go take the time to actually go and look through everything and make sure the account numbers match and that it’s a real person. They don’t take the time to call them back on their direct line. Most people will just say, ‘Oh, yeah, I have a DISH account. Yes, I pay with a credit card. Yes, there’s a likelihood that it got declined for some odd reason and give them a new credit card number. By the time they catch it, it’s too late.” The scams tend to prey on people who are generally sensible, but they are put in a position where they don’t have much time to think. “They just want you to react and send them money to hopefully make the problem disappear or to help someone out who you think is in a bind.”

The more effective scams look legitimate at a cursory glance or prey on your relationship with the individual they are posing as. “Generally when they contact you, they take you off guard. Because you think it’s someone you know, you’re not expecting it to be a scam. We’ve even had people who have fallen victim to months or weeks long conversation with people that they think they actually know. It’s all just a ploy to get money, but generally they have a sense of urgency to them.” The urgency pushes the target to help to keep their friend from losing their car or home or going to jail. He also described instances where urgent demands for gift cards were associated with threats that the target of the scam will face repercussions for having not payed bills or fines.

Though though scams usually look for money, they also sometimes attempt to get information, like social security or credit card numbers. Even clicking a suspicious link that has been texted/emailed to you can open the door to scammers seizing control of your computer, email accounts, or gaining access to your Apple/Amazon/Ebay accounts with legitimate looking login screens that are actually fronts for scammers collecting information.

Officer Echols offered a few tips for spotting suspected scam emails and calls: “Usually it involves a request for money and generally it is in a currency that is not commonly accepted such as gift cards or online payment services, like Pay Pal or something else. It’s not a normal transactional currency that you would use everyday to pay your mortgage or your other bills.” He also advises against giving information when companies contact you. “One of the best things I would say to do is stop the conversation and contact them a different way. So if they sent you an email, call that person on the phone and ask. ‘Hey, I got an email from you, what’s going on?’” Any company that contacts you will understand you hanging up and calling back or calling their main number to confirm the basic facts. Your credit or debit cards have phone numbers printed on them to call and confirm facts before proceeding to deal with a situation. The same is true of your cable company, internet provider, and anyone else you might be paying bills to. “It is difficult because most legitimate banks do send fraud alerts and text messages, make phone calls, send emails, that kind of stuff, but you never want to click on the links or call any number that shows up in a text message because sometimes they aren’t legit.” Instead, “You should have the number on the back of your debit card or on your checks. Call the direct line to the bank. A lot of banks have a fraud number that is different from the main line, but they can transfer you there if you get a suspicious text or anything like that. Just generally don’t open emails or links in emails.” In addition, email addresses and web addresses can be misleading through the changing of letters or substituting numbers or symbols to disguise the fact that they’re fake. “Your best bet is just to call directly and talk to whoever you think you’re talking to and verify. You can also contact your bank and ask them ‘Is this a legitimate thing?’ Most of the banks have access to a lot of the scams that are going around.” When you receive a text message or email saying they are from your bank, Apple, Amazon, or some other company, rather than clicking the link, it is smart to go to the website you typically use to do business with them in order to deal with whatever is going on. The extra steps could potentially save you money and headaches down the road.