 |
In this scheme to get the little bit of information that is all a crook now needs to steal your hard-earned money, victims receive a phone call from a person claiming to be from a delivery or courier business, complete with a professional sounding name.
The "courier" tells you he has a package to deliver and asks if you will be home (yes, he knows your address) in about an hour as the delivery requires a signature.
At the appointed time, a man in a professional looking uniform walks up to your door carrying a beautiful basket of flowers and a bottle of wine, even though it's not a holiday or any other special occasion that you're aware of.
When asked, the deliveryman can't tell you who sent it, he's only the delivery man. Usually, though, a card alerting the recipient is sent ... it just must be delayed this time.
Because the gift contains alcohol, he tells you, there is a small fee for delivery as well as to verify the recipient is of age to receive the gift, usually just three or four dollars. The delivery driver won't take cash; a credit card is necessary, he says, as proof of age. If you balk, more logical reasons are paraded, each one a lie, just to get you to offer a credit card he can swipe on the small device he has.
It doesn't even have to be you who provides the card. Any other person in your house who looks of age and offers a card is just as good.
The card is swiped, the PIN number entered, a receipt is even printed out and given the card holder, giving a sense that the transaction is legitimate and nothing untoward has taken place.
Most won't notice that no small delivery fee was deducted from their account, the recipient, given a few days, will likely forget that a card telling who the lovely gift was from was expected.
In this scam, there is no such card, the machine you swiped your card on made no transaction.
All it did was read your card and record your data for the deliveryman and his posse, to be used a few days later after you've forgotten many of the details police would ask for to help identify the person who gave you flowers and wine.
You won't likely know that anything is amiss until you check your account and realized that your "card" had been used at various ATMs and that the balance in your account suddenly took a nose dive.
When you realize you've been scammed, you take the usual and recommended actions, putting a stop on the card, freezing or closing the account, calling the police, but by then, the crook is long gone and you don't remember much to help authorities track down the culprit.
People are advised to be wary of accepting any surprise gift or package which you neither expected nor personally ordered, especially if it involves any kind of payment as a condition of receiving the gift or package.
Also, never accept anything if you do not personally know or there is no proper identification of who the sender is.
Above all, the only time you should give out any personal credit/debit card information is when you yourself initiated the purchase or transaction!