“If you got cash app hit me. Let’s get free money,” urges an online post. “You got cash app and wanna make free (money emoji)? Ask me how,” says another. And, viewers are informed, “You don’t need to send money to make money say photo know how it works.”
Messages such as these are increasing across cyberspace, turning alleged “glitches” and promises of blessing into a potential unexpected curse for unsuspecting souls who fall casualty to the allure of free money.
“In the last eight months, there’s been a dramatic uptick in monetary related scams, mostly involving cash app, stolen or washed or counterfeit checks, and it’s affecting a lot of people,” said Det. Sgt. Jason Smith, head of the Minden Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division.
“They see on Facebook something that’s blessing people, or a cash app glitch showing free cash. But rest assured there are no glitches, no blessings. Only stolen funds that are being mobile deposited into people’s accounts, and they’re becoming the barrier or insulator to the actual thief,” Smith said.
While individuals are prime targets, even business and government can stumble into the fraudulent schemes. Example: A local fast food restaurant manager receives a phone call from an International number. The manager is convinced they’re talking to a regional manager who says an important fire safety-related meeting is scheduled. That local manager is convinced to purchase more than $2,000 in fire and safety equipment.
After taking money from the restaurant’s safe, the local manager drives to Bossier City and converts it into Bit Coin at a Bit Coin ATM. Poof. The money’s gone. Untraceable.
“It’s untraceable once it’s turned into Bit Coin,” Smith said. “We weren’t even familiar with a Bit Coin ATM until we did our research after this happened. That’s the purpose of crypto currency. It can’t be taxed and it can disappear.”
Another example: One agency of a local governmental body had several checks counterfeited and mobile uploaded to another state. Smith said five area individuals, including one in Baton Rouge, acted as barriers or insulators for the person actually making the deposits.
“Using their bank accounts, the thief received the mobile upload to input to cash app. That’s where it disappeared,” he said. “These are stolen funds. Records show these people deposited the counterfeit checks into their accounts, which shows they’re the ones stealing. They could be subject to theft charges and access device fraud.”
Smith said one victim of the scams thought she had received a data entry job, but later found her account was being used as a conduit to shuffle money.
“She paid two hundred dollars to receive supplies and got that money back,” Smith said. “But several people began putting money into her personal account, and that was sent to the actual thief. It looks like they’re the person receiving the funds and by the time they find out it’s a scam, they’ve had five to six thousand dollars flow through the account.”
Tracking the perpetrators is difficult due to the number of individuals who have become barriers (layers) between the origin and the actual thief or thieves, Smith said. And there’s jurisdictional problems since no federal law is being violated.
“We were able to track the person who was mobile depositing the public agency checks to Georgia through search warrants, GEO location and other means,” he said. “The problem is working across state lines and getting others to do something about it. Some wanted us to hand it over to the FBI but they don’t want it. It becomes convoluted and people get away with it.”
Chief of Police Jared McIver said detectives have to wade through lists of victims and try to follow a money trail even while scam artists are constantly changing tactics.
“There’s a lot of people who sit around and do a lot of thinking about how to do this,” he said. “It’s very sophisticated…each is different in their own little ways. Local people are used as insulators. They’re able to keep some of the money, some goes to a middle man and some to the thief. He’s protected by four or five people around him and he’s often out of the country.”
Smith said he has found something in common with at least one area parish as he continues to track local suspects.
“It’s not just a Webster Parish thing, we’ve had a lot of the same suspects in Caddo Parish,” he said. “Their suspects are ours. There are a lot of people in a circle.”
Local detectives found themselves at a disadvantage during the initial stages of the investigation. Time, they learned, was not an ally.
“By the time someone learned they had been scammed, three or four months had passed and we had to try to make up ground,” Smith said. “It takes that long for search warrants and we’re dealing with larger banks, cash apps and Facebook. So far, we’re looking at a total of about three hundred thousand dollars, mostly in increments of between five hundred and fifteen hundred dollars.”
Knowing there’s a real possibility that innocent victims of these monetary scams might become those who are prosecuted for theft should be a deterrent, Smith said.
“Many of us need money, but there’s no such thing as free money. There’s no guarantee that someone is going to receive a blessing from something posted online. When something seems too good to be true, it often isn’t,” he said. “If I had one word of advice for anyone who might be thinking of taking up this blessing thing, it would be, Don’t.”
