A scam involving a supposed customer service representative from Cash App has robbed several people of as much as thousands of dollars, a report from ABC 7NY says.
One user, Sherita Reese, quoted by the piece, says she’d recently had trouble accessing Cash App on her phone, despite having used it several times. She made a call to a number she found on Google and was eventually connected to a man claiming to be a supervisor with the company.
From there, he asked her to download an app that could allow him to check the app remotely. She said she could then see the man moving something on her screen, and $350 was deducted from her account.
At that point, according to the report, the man “says immediately goodbye” and hung up.
Another victim reported a similar chain of events that led to over $3,000 deducted from her account, the report says.
After that, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) issued a scam alert to Cash App customers. As to how the scammers’ numbers ended up on Google, cybersecurity expert Randy Haba said scammers have been known to set up websites looking almost identical to a well-known company’s, adding fake phone numbers to make confused customers call the scammers instead. Search engine optimization is a way to manipulate the search results and put fake websites at the top of the list, the report says.
Both Google and Cash App, in responses, said they took fraud seriously and encouraged users to be vigilant and to contact officials if they believe a scam is taking place.
The BBB has reported earlier this year on similar Cash App scams taking place, including one variation in which a perpetrator requests money through the app and then blocks the sender immediately, and one similar to the aforementioned scam, in which fake phone numbers were used to glean users’ login information.