Fake Venmo accounts stealing from charities? Eben Brown explains

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is John Mouse, filling in for JT. And
joining me now is Evan Brown. Evan, you do a
feature we run on our station sometimes called Fox on Tech,
where you do a little tech thing. I always appreciate
your knowledge and insight into the tech world. You've got
a new one now that there's fake Venmo accounts and
they're stealing donations from real charities.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Yeah, this is a problem. It's another way those scammers
are able to fool you. And it's on these payment
apps like Venmo and cash app and maybe even some
others that people might be using. But they create fake
accounts that look very similar onder their handles, their user
names to legitimate entities, charities, businesses, whatnot, and people who

(00:42):
are trying to send payments are inadvertently sending them to
the scammers. And there's really not much you can do
once that transaction takes place. So, for instance, there's a
cancer charity in Louisiana that has been you know, there's
a Camra out there that has sort of cloned the

(01:02):
name a little bit has a you know, probably has
an expert dash in the username or something like that,
and so many people have been donating or thinking they're
donating to the cancer charity, but in fact they've been
giving money to this crook or you know, a collection
of crooks, probably more than anything. And it's, like I said,
there's not much you can do once that happens. There
You may or may not have any kind of fraud

(01:23):
protection with regard to this. It's not fully like a
credit card where you call up the company and you
say you've been defrauded and they hold you not responsible
and so on and so forth send you a new card.
So you just have to be really vigilant. Make sure
that account that you're sending money to definitely is the
bona fide account. If it's a charity, or if it's

(01:45):
another group and you're just simply not sure, call them
ask them is this you? And just make sure otherwise
you could be out some money, as could be the
charity you're looking to donate to.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Is VEMO looking into trying to make it more difficult
for these cameras to do this. It would be in
their best interest for people to trust their app and
know that they're giving to the correct as opposed to
Red Cross with like two s's or three s's or
something like that.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
These companies. These companies do a lot to try to
prevent fraud, but they're not going to get everything. And
it's not just Vemo. I don't want to single them out.
I mean this happens across the board all the place,
and yes, they do have a vested interest in people
being able to trust the platform, but there will be
people who will do their best to scam you no
matter which way they can. And so ultimately, the best

(02:31):
defender of your money is you, and you need to
definitely look and be doubly sure that you're sending money
to the right person.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
I've always thought that the best way to do is
some sort of like a two way situation where they
send you something and you're responding to the thing you
know that you just requested, so that way you know
that that is the actual because we pay for stuff
like this all the time. My daughter's involved with certain
things and they'll send us a notification we send the
money back, so that way I know I sent the place.
Because yeah, there's always if I go they're searching, there's

(03:02):
twenty five things that look kind of like the thing
I'm trying to send money to, and I want to
make sure I send it to the right place.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Well, yes, you know some of these services, or you
know some of the wallet apps that you know, for instance,
on your iPhone, if you have Apple pay cash, you
know you're sending it to someone in your context. So
if you're sending it to your kid, they're getting it.
You know, that's that's easy to solidify. But you know
for these other payment platforms where you're just giving to

(03:30):
a vendor, right, you just have to be extra sure
you're sending it to the right person.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Well, I mean you've made me double check. I'm going
to look more carefully now the next time I send
something to somebody using one of these cash apps, because
you're right, there's a lot that can go wrong. A
lot's changed since you just hand take a twenty dollars
bill out of your wallet and hand it to somebody.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
You know. Well, you know that's getting more popular again
because a lot of vendors, especially doctors' offices, are now
charging three and a half percent if you want to
run your credit card or even your debit card. They're
not supposed to do it with debit cards, but a
lot of a lot of vendors and retailers are doing
that because they want the customer to eat the cost
of running the card. And that's just a sign of

(04:11):
the economic times, I guess. But that has caused people
to stop off at the ATM and pick up cash
and use cash when when you know, making their purchases,
or paying their copas, or paying for the oil change or.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
Whatever it is, cash is still king. Evan Brown live
from Miami, thank you so much for joining us this
morning on Alabama's Morning News.