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FTC Sues Walmart for Facilitating Money Transfer Fraud

ftc.gov

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Re: FTC Sues Walmart for Facilitating Money Transfer Fraud

#4
Daughter nearly fell victim to one of these. An auditor over the course of 2 hours convinced her that the store manager was stealing money and that she needed to transfer it back to corporate.

Thankfully I was giving her a ride that day. She was in a total panic but wouldn’t tell me what was going on. He had her convinced that if she said anything she was gonna go to jail.

I thought they were having her do a night money drop off by herself which I was pissed about.

She went into a Kroger to the finance counter. Which is when I finally realized what was going on.

The lady at the counter was totally gonna let her send several thousand dollars to some random Green dot account.

So I asked if the lady could go get the store manager real quick.

Older lady walks up and says “oh you’re being scammed” My daughter burst into tears as she finally realizes she had just robbed her own store.

Store manager regaled us with tons of stories of scams people were constantly trying to run on them many of them incredibly elaborate.

If I hadn’t been there good chance she would be arrested.

A painful life lesson.

Re: FTC Sues Walmart for Facilitating Money Transfer Fraud

#6
post #3

What implications does this have on churning?

What is churning in this context?

Credit card rewards churning probably. Basically finding cards with either attractive starting offers or ongoing rewards and then generating cash flow through them that is recurring. One example was the mint at one point was selling some coin online with free shipping, after receiving the coins you'd just deposit them into your account for zero loss. It looked like a normal purchase to the CC so you got the full points for it.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/credit-cards/credit-card-...

https://viewfromthewing.com/free-miles-for-churning-presiden...

Re: FTC Sues Walmart for Facilitating Money Transfer Fraud

#8

Daughter nearly fell victim to one of these. An auditor over the course of 2 hours convinced her that the store manager was stealing money and that she needed to transfer it back to corporate. Thankfully I was giving her a ride that day. She was in a total panic but wouldn’t tell me what was going on. He had her convinced that if she said anything she was gonna go to jail. I thought they were having her do a night mo…

This sounds like a separate, but related novel version of these scams that target Walmart's employee. You might want to report this to the FTC via the contact info in the article so they can be on the lookout for stuff like this in there investigations.

Re: FTC Sues Walmart for Facilitating Money Transfer Fraud

#9

Daughter nearly fell victim to one of these. An auditor over the course of 2 hours convinced her that the store manager was stealing money and that she needed to transfer it back to corporate. Thankfully I was giving her a ride that day. She was in a total panic but wouldn’t tell me what was going on. He had her convinced that if she said anything she was gonna go to jail. I thought they were having her do a night mo…

This sounds like a separate, but related novel version of these scams that target Walmart's employee. You might want to report this to the FTC via the contact info in the article so they can be on the lookout for stuff like this in there investigations.

There was actually a news article with the exact scenario. I showed it to my daughter at the counter as a way to get her to slow down and think.

Re: FTC Sues Walmart for Facilitating Money Transfer Fraud

#10
post #7

What implications does this have on churning?

Probably none, given this complaint is focused on money services Walmart provides.

Walmart Money Center has been a pretty large component of "manufactured spending" which is not the same thing as churning but churning is often used as an umbrella term for all point earning hacks activities.
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