If you receive a call and someone is asking you to pay them in gift cards, just hang up. The call is a scam, explains Monmouth Police Chief Joe Switzer:
“If someone calls you and asks you to pay them with gift cards, that is a scammer calling you. Nobody legitimate is going to ask you to pay them for service or something else in gift cards. Once they have the gift card and the number and the pin, they have your money and you don’t get that back. They may tell you different stories on some emergency they have or something to get you to pay them with a gift cards, but that is usually what happens is they are scamming you out of your money via the gift cards.”
In the 2021 Better Business Bureau Scam Tracker report, online purchase scams were at the top of the list, followed by cryptocurrency scams and employment scams. If you encounter a scam or have fell victim to a scam, complaints can be filed online with the FBI Crime Complaint Center at http://ic3.gov or the Federal Trade Commission at http://ftc.gov.
