The caller may become hostile or insulting and they may threaten you with arrest, deportation, or suspension of a business or driver’s license. Even if the caller knows and recites the last four digits of your Social Security number, this is still a scam. If this caller tries to scare you into buying gift cards as payment for back taxes or for other legal situations, hang up the phone this caller is a scammer. You may get a phone call from someone claiming to be the IRS, police, or another official government entity. Five common Google Play gift card scam scenarios IRS and government imposter If anyone ever asks you to pay them with a Google Play gift card, it’s a scam. The most important thing to know is that Google Play gift cards can only be used to purchase apps, movies, books, and other video game or app-related purchases through the Google Play store. To help you protect yourself from scams involving gift cards, Google and NCL are partnering to help educate consumers about how to spot the warning signs of these scams.

With the holiday season upon us, it’s likely that scammers will ramp up their activity even more. According to the FTC, $74.3 million was lost due to gift card and reload card scams in the first nine months of this year. Gift cards are popular targets for scammers. Unfortunately, complaints like this one are just the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, the scammers had already drained the money from the gift cards, leaving her out thousands of dollars. It wasn’t until the scammer asked for even more money for a “security deposit” that she realized it was a scam. When she called back, she was told to buy Target and Google Play gift cards and give the scammer the codes on the back of the cards, which she did. She was told that a warrant for her arrest would be put out if she didn’t pay immediately. The consumer received a voicemail saying that she owed the IRS and that, if she didn’t pay, her bank accounts and Social Security would be frozen. The story we heard from one consumer in Alaska is typical of this type of scam. The average losses reported in such cases were $1,937.

Unfortunately, many of the complaints we received indicated that the consumer had already sent the money. Dozens of those complaints mentioned that they specifically wanted payment via Google Play gift cards. Since the beginning of the year, NCL’s campaign has received hundreds of complaints from consumers reporting that scammers involved in a variety of frauds requested payment via gift cards.

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