Posted by Brian
a resident of Menlo Park: The Willows
on Jul 5, 2022 at 2:21 pm
Brian is a registered user.

Thank you for writing this article. I have seen family members of friends taken for hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraud schemes and have helped stop my neighbor from falling victim to schemes like the ones mentioned above. I think a community program to educate store retail clerks about these issues would also be a big help. Most of the scams ask for Apple Gift Cards or other gift cards to make the payment. This is because once they have the card information it is impossible to stop them and get the money back. A clerk that is aware of this can talk to a person buying large dollar amounts of these cards and help stop the crime before they lose a lot of money. Just asking someone why they are buying them and explaining they are asking because cards are used in most cases of fraud might save an elderly person or one with cognitive challenges hundreds or thousands of dollars.

The article should have mentioned that being asked to pay using any form of gift card is a dead giveaway that this is fraud