This image was removed due to legal reasons.

City of Chicago, we have a little advice for you: if a stranger pulls up and offers you a lift, do not get in the car. Not ever. Not even if they have an Uber sticker in the window and a bucket of candy in the backseat.


Chicago police have issued a warning to residents after two incidents in which guys posing as Uber drivers pulled up to someone waiting for a ride, offered a lift and then robbed them.

These windy city incidents are the latest in an apparent nationwide rush of imposter Uber driver scams. Earlier this month, a Florida man impersonating an Uber driver picked up a 19-year-old college student as she hailed a late-night ride from a Florida State University campus dorm. After the driver whipped out his you-know-what, she fled the car. And in Texas an Uber driver convinced two young university women to get in his car outside of campus after telling them another passenger had cancelled on him.


For obvious reasons, Uber has features built into the app to protect against exactly this kind of thing, like showing you the driver's name, picture and license plate number in advance so you can check that the driver who picks you up matches the details of the driver you hailed.

So unless the driver that offers you a ride knows your name and matches the photo of the ride you actually hailed in the Uber app, we repeat: do not get into cars with strangers.