New gift card scams has appeared. This time scammers pretend to bea pastors, rabbis, priests, imams, or bishops. There are asking worshipers for gift cards contributions because of a meritorious cause by email, texts or phone calls.
This fraudulent emails or texts include the name of the local pastor or rabbi and his bogus email address. You can tell becuase the email address isn’t the one normally used by church and the message begin with simple “Hi,”but doesn’t include a recipients’ name.
The scammers asks you to buy a famous gift card, iTunes, Google Play, Amazon – these are very common. Then they asks for the gift card number and PIN. This infomration let the scammer immediately get your money from the gift card.
If you or sameone you know receive this email and paid a scammer with a gift card, tell it as soon as possible. You can contact a card company and tell them the gift card was used in a scame and then tell FTC about it at ftc.gov/complaint.
Here is contact information for some of the gift card companies we already mentioned:
Amazon
Call 1 (888) 280-4331
Learn about Amazon gift card scams here.
Google Play
Call 1 (855) 466-4438
Report gift card scams online here.
Learn about Google Play gift card scams here.
iTunes
Call Apple Support at 1 (800) 275-2273, then say “gift card” to be connected to a live representative.
Learn about iTunes gift card scams and how to report them here
