Palos Park police sound warning as another senior falls victim to gift card scam

The Palos Park police chief is warning residents about a popular telephone scam targeting senior citizens perpetrated by scam artists pretending to work for Amazon.

Chief Joe Miller issued the warning after a 75-year-old man reported last week he was scammed out of $1,000 after receiving a call from someone pretending to work for “Amazon Security.” The man became suspicious and contacted police.

The report was not an unusual one for the Palos Park department. Noting the village is home to a significant population of senior citizens, Miller said his department has warned seniors about the scam at village coffees and community meetings. But police still field at least one report a week of a suspicious robocall and several residents each month fall victim to the scam.

While similar cons aimed at the elderly have existed for decades, recently law enforcement have noted an uptick of robocalls from people masquerading as Amazon employees.

“Since COVID everybody uses Amazon for purchases and deliveries,” Miller said. “They hear their account has been breached, they hear there is a problem with their account, and they want to rectify it immediately.”

The premise begins by a caller informing a resident there has been suspicious activity on their account. To fix the security breach, they are told to purchase gift cards through places such as Walgreens, CVS Pharmacy and Walmart. The seniors are then to call back a supplied telephone number and read the gift card numbers, granting the con man instant access to those funds.

They may also ask directly for a victim’s Amazon account information, their bank account and routing numbers or even to gain remote access to their computer, Miller said.

“They sit on the phone for a couple hours, call 30 people and maybe one of them will give you a $1,000. That’s not a bad day’s work,” Miller said.

In more extreme cases, elderly victims across the country have reported being conned out of hundreds of thousands of dollars after receiving an automated call they believed was from an Amazon employee.

Miller reminded residents that requests to pay via wire transfer, prepaid debit card, CashApp or with gift cards are nearly always signs of fraud. Miller even had someone attempt to con him last fall, with a caller telling him there was a warrant for his arrest.

Amazon scams were among the top five complaints to AARP’s Fraud Watch Network helpline in 2021, according to the organization’s website. During the pandemic, the AARP reported Amazon-related scams became nearly as common as government impostor scams, such as those from callers pretending to work for the IRS.

From July 2020 through June 2021, about one in three people reporting a business impersonator said the caller claimed to be from Amazon, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

In that same time frame, the Federal Trade Commission fielded about 96,000 calls from people targeted by Amazon scammers and reported losses of more than $27 million, according to the commission’s website. For context, the second most impersonated business was Apple with about 16,000 reports. People over the age of 60 were also four times more likely than younger residents to report being scammed by an Amazon personator.

Amazon has acknowledged the problem and urges their customers to never share personal information and report suspicious calls, texts or emails immediately to the Federal Trade Commission and to Amazon customer service.

Kate McCann is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.