UW-Madison police got to show the public a crash course on how a gift card scam works on their Twitter feed this week.
Community Service Officer Terry Evans responded to a fake ad saying you could work from home for big money. Scammers sent him a phony check and told him to buy them some gift cards.
“They want you to do that as fast as you can because it only takes a few days, maybe a week before that check bounces, and you realize you’ve been taken advantage of.”
The Police Department even cooked up some real looking fake iTunes gift cards for him to send to the scammers, but that was the end of the scam. It only took the crooks a few days to catch on that Evans wasn’t going to send them anything of value.
Evans says putting this sort of thing on social media helps educate people where they are and keep them from becoming victims. “We have a lot of young students who are living on their own for the first time and are susceptible to these type of things.”
“Rather than me sort of telling everyone ‘here’s how to avoid scamming and here’s what happens,’ I thought it was important to kind of show people what they’re going to do to you.”
You can follow along with the scam and the methods that the department used to waste the scammer’s time at http://twitter.com/UnivAptsUWPD
I got a text. ???? Why texts vs calls or emails? I will answer that in the video. I am off to “The Walmart”???? pic.twitter.com/u7fZ2La3id
— Officer Evans (@UnivAptsUWPD) January 8, 2019