Apparently there is a new phone scam where someone asks to use your phone because their battery died.
If your phone has access to financial accounts, be careful to whom you hand it.The scam unfolds exactly as laid out above.
“It was an, ‘Excuse me, I’m looking for a friend, my phone is dead, do you mind if I borrow your phone?’ and then the person says OK, they unlock their phone and hand it over,” said Detective Raymond Wetzel with CSPD’s Financial Crimes Unit.
And with the victim’s phone in hand, the crook is able to get to work.
“The suspect will point the phone towards his face, pretend to call a number -- maybe actually dial a number so the sound, you know, on a speakerphone so the person can hear their phone being dialed. But in between hitting numbers, they’re also opening their Venmo account and making a number of unauthorized transactions to multiple recipient accounts,”
Since the rise of cell phones and demise of pay phones, I seldom remember friends numbers.
jtk