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April 1, 2020 07:30 pm

Cash App Scammers Are Using Coronavirus To Exploit People

An anonymous reader shares a report: Reyna is a teenager in Florida whose family is strapped for cash amid the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus. When the uber-popular beauty influencer Jeffree Star tweeted that he'd be giving out $30,000 via payment service Cash App to a random person who retweeted him, she did just that. Star's offer seems to have been legitimate -- and drummed up a lot of attention for the influencer. A woman actually won the $30,000, and Reyna missed out. But then another Twitter user messaged Reyna asking whether she wanted to get $250, she told Quartz. "My goal is to help those in need or need emergency cash," the person said. The catch was that she'd have to pay $25 first. "Your deposit along with our other earnings allows us to immediately send you your payment," the person said. Reyna sent the cash, and that's when the Twitter user blocked her, and her money was gone, she said. What happened to Reyna is a popular Cash App scam called "cash-flipping," according to Satnam Narang, researcher at the cybersecurity company Tenable. Con artists are taking advantage of the coronavirus by pretending they are helping the needy. While Reyna simply got a direct message to lure her in after she expressed interest in a legitimate giveaway, other scammers have been promoting fake giveaways in public tweets adding "#coronavirus" in order to reach more people. Sometimes they will request money through Cash App pretending that it's a verification mechanism. "They'll say, you won this giveaway, send us $10 to verify to win 500 bucks," Narang said. The scammers say they have a special way of modifying the transactions through payment applications like Cash App, Paypal, Zelle, Venmo, or Apple Pay, Narang wrote in a blog post explaining the scams. "All they ask for is that the recipient share the initial cut with them for providing them this so-called service." This, of course, is all made up.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/of7iV57X6RY/cash-app-scammers-are-using-coronavirus-to-exploit-people

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