Manhattan DA Bragg Jr. says financial apps are the most “lucrative target” for scammers
One of the apps cited as problematic by the Manhattan DA was Cash App
Bragg Jr. is the Manhattan DA, but what he is describing is actually a nationwide problem. In his letters to the CEOs of Zelle, Venmo, and Cash App, Bragg Jr. wrote , “Just in the past year, there have been thefts stretching from Los Angeles, where several people were robbed of thousands of dollars through Venmo at knifepoint, to Orlando, where a woman had thousands drained from her Venmo after a child asked to use her phone. Similar thefts and robberies have been publicly reported in West Virginia, Louisiana, Illinois, Kansas, Tennessee, Virginia, and elsewhere across the United States.”
Bragg Jr. explains that in one version of the scam, a stranger approaches a smartphone owner and asks to borrow his phone to make a call, and while in possession of the victim’s device, the thief transfers a large amount of funds to himself using the victim’s financial app. In another ploy, the stranger asks for a donation for a specific cause and offers to transfer the money himself using the victim’s smartphone. But once the phone is in the scammer’s possession, he transfers a large amount of money to his own account.
The easiest way to avoid getting ripped off is not to allow your phone to be held by anyone but you
A spokesman for Zelle’s parent company, Early Warning Systems, played down the number of incidents even while admitting that it was aware of the criminal activity mentioned in Bragg Jr.’s letter. The company said, “Less than one-tenth of one percent of transactions are reported as fraud or scams, and that percentage keeps getting smaller.”
A Cash App spokesman said that the firm was “committed to building trust with our customers and investing in areas that help build a safe and secure platform.” It went on to say that it works “proactively and diligently to safeguard our customer’s money and mitigate against the risk of fraud on our platform through a combination of preventative controls like multi-factor authentication, account transaction limits, fraud detection, and consumer education.”
The new feature also requires that an hour pass between the time an iPhone user makes certain important changes to the FindMy app, Face ID, the Apple ID password, and more. After the hour, the user’s identity must be verified by Face ID or Touch ID.
