SALT LAKE CITY — Kim says she knew what she was doing didn’t feel right.

“My womanly instinct, my gut on the way there was, ‘Wait, something’s wrong, something’s weird,’” she said.

But because the person she was talking to on the phone — who claimed to be a representative from Apple — was pressuring her to complete her task or risk “hackers” getting information stored on her iCloud, she went ahead and purchased $3,500 worth of gift cards that she was told would take care of the problem.

But by the time she realized she was being scammed and started driving to her bank to stop the transactions, it was too late.

“I was devastated, just sick to my stomach,” she said. “I’m still sick about it. Humiliated.”

In fact, Kim said she was so embarrassed she fell for the scam that she almost didn’t go to police. But she knew her story needed to be told to warn others. Still, she asked that her last name not be used for this article.

“I was so humiliated and felt so stupid and felt so horrible because my husband had worked so hard, we didn’t have hardly any money left in our checking account that day, and we had just got paid,” she said.

But police say Kim isn’t alone, both in falling for an online scam and feeling embarrassed to the point that she didn’t want to report the crime.

The Deseret News talked to officers in several counties about recent online scams their agencies have investigated. In most cases, the suspects pose as legitimate customer service representatives from companies like Apple or Amazon, and send out convincing emails or phone calls to trick victims into giving away personal information about their online accounts.

And in most cases, police say the suspects are conducting their crimes from another country and will never be brought to justice.

‘Free money’ never free

In April, Park City police received a call from the Chandler Police Department in Arizona seeking assistance on one of its cases. A man in that state had recently purchased an Amazon Echo speaker and was having trouble setting it up.

The man went to a website that was listed in the instruction manual as a place to get help. But after he accessed the website, “he received a pop-up that provided a number for Amazon Customer Support,” according to a search warrant affidavit filed in 3rd District Court.

Park City police detective Stuart Rollins said it was the pop-up that was the scam.

Once the victim called the number that was on the pop-up, he was transferred to a person who told the man “that he needed to access his computer to diagnose the issue.”

The man gave the person on the phone the information needed to access his laptop remotely. That’s when the man on the phone claimed the victim’s computer had been “hacked” and the victim would need to pay $150 for software to fix the problem, the warrant states.

But later, the person posing as the customer service representative contacted the victim again to say the software didn’t work and that he would refund the man $200, but he could only do it through his checking account and needed to access his computer again, according to the warrant.

The man watched his screen as the scammer remotely “pulled up what looked like a refund website.”

He watched as the man typed in a refund. But “$20,000” was typed instead of “$200.” The scammer claimed it was a mistake and that the victim needed to wire transfer $19,500 back to him. “(The suspect told the victim) that he could keep the $500 due to the mistake,” the warrant states.

The victim went to his bank account and discovered there was $20,000 extra in it, so he thought the transaction was legitimate, and transferred $19,500 to a Chase Bank account opened in Park City, according to the warrant.

It was only later that the victim realized the $20,000 that was in his checking account came from his home equity line of credit.

The scammer had transferred the funds while he had access to the victim’s laptop.

“By the time (the victim) figured this out, it was too late to cancel the wire transfer. Chase Bank informed (him) that the $19,500 was quickly transferred out of the account shortly after it was received,” the warrant states.

The man’s bank told him they would be unable to reimburse him for the fraud.

Rollins said through his investigation, he learned the money was withdrawn from the Park City bank shortly after and transferred to a person in India. He said the case was closed because there was nothing else that local authorities could do.

In cases like this, Rollins said consumers need to be aware that those trying to defraud people will create pop-ups or emails that look like they come from the real company, but the URL addresses are off by just a number or a letter.

“It will mirror the website so they think it’s on the real one,” the detective said.

Consumers need to be protective of the information they give out, Rollins said. And never let anyone have access to your laptop over the phone.

“Usually they’re going to ask for information they should already know,” he said. “In this case, you have to ask why would they need to get into your laptop or computer? ... I don’t think I’ve ever called a company that said, ‘Hey can I access your computer remotely?’”

Rollins said another red flag is when a “company” says you can keep extra money deposited into an account.

“Free money isn’t ever free money,” he said.

Instafraud

“Criminals are just getting better and better online, so it’s hard to know what’s a legitimate site to purchase off of and what’s not,” said Provo Police Sgt. Nisha King.

She said one red flag to look for is if a company asks a customer to purchase gift cards.

“No one will ever ask you to send them a gift card of any kind. Apparently that is rampant. It’s happening a lot,” King said.

Utah County Sheriff’s Sgt. Spencer Cannon said his department investigated a case just last week of a woman who was scammed into buying $1,300 worth of gift cards to settle a problem with her Social Security, and gave those numbers away to a person on the phone.

“Who pays the Social Security Administration anything via gift cards?” Cannon asked rhetorically, noting it should be an obvious red flag.

Another red flag is paying attention to what format the customer is being asked to transfer money. More established formats, like Venmo and PayPal, are less likely to be used by scammers.

In July, a woman reported to Provo police that she was following a company named “GLAMMINKSS” on Instagram, which claimed to offer cosmetology training, according to a search warrant filed in 4th District Court.

The woman reached out to the company, which “instructed (her) to download Cash App on her phone and send $150,” the warrant states. The woman was then given a Salt Lake address and was told it was where a training class would be held. But when she showed up to that business, she learned there was no training.

“The employees at that location informed her that she wasn’t the first person to be scammed,” the warrant states. In fact, as police investigated the case, they learned the site “GLAMMINKSS” had “victimized numerous people.”

King said Instagram has since deactivated the GLAMMINKSS account.

She said another step consumers can take to protect themselves is doing an internet search on a company before doing business with it to find out if others have reported problems.

Other recent scams

In June, South Ogden police began investigating the case of a woman who sent more than $55,000 to a man she met on a dating app — much of it in gift cards, according to a search warrant affidavit filed in 2nd District Court.

“Each of the gift cards were for approximately $100 and (the woman) sent approximately $18,000 in gift cards,” the warrant states.

She also sent a wire transfer of $37,000 allegedly to be invested in the man’s business. The woman said she texted and talked to the man on the phone, who had a foreign accent.

“(She) thought that she was investing into Broadrock Development LLC out of Conneaut, Ohio. ... The website for Broadrock Development LLC had been found to be fraudulent,” the warrant states.

The number the woman was using to text the man “returns to a Google Voice line,” police noted.

In July, Layton police began investigating a fraud case using Snapchat.

A man “reported that he was contacted by a peer on Snapchat ... asking him if he could do some mobile deposits through his bank account,” another affidavit states.

“OK well basically I just do a couple mobile deposits. Your account can be empty. The money is available in minutes. Of course I ask for a cut of the money if you are trustworthy on sending my cut we can do business almost everyday,” the message stated. “My people basically own a business and the more employees it look like we pay, the less taxes we have to pay next year so basically it’s like you’re a employee and you can actually file taxes next year as if you worked for us. Everything is legal trust me. I’m just hoping I can trust you when it comes to sending my cut because I have to pay my people.. As long as I can trust you we can get started!”

The man provided the sender with his online banking login information and a check was deposited into his account for $4,570, the warrant states. He was then asked to wire $2,500 in increments of $500 as payment.

“After the money was sent (he) found out the check was bad and his account was overdrawn by $2,500 dollars, and is out that money. (He) has since tried to get hold of (the suspect) and has since been blocked on Snapchat,” police wrote.

In April, a couple attempted to rent an apartment in Vineyard after seeing an ad on Craigslist. The couple never met the person claiming to be the owner and never walked through the apartment, but paid $2,300 for a deposit to secure their place. But when they drove to the apartment, they learned that it was not for rent and the person who placed the ad was not the actual owner, Cannon said.

The money that was sent to the man was quickly transferred out of a bank account in the U.S. and to another account in Africa, investigators learned. Cannon said the case was closed and the couple will likely not ever get their money back.

Trust no one

In Kim’s case, she said she has an Apple customer service number in her cellphone contacts. One day, her phone rang and her caller ID showed it was Apple, she said.

“They said that my iCloud had been hacked and I needed to hold on so they could transfer me to someone who could reset it,” she said.

Kim would later be told by police that detectives weren’t completely sure how the scammers were able to call her.

“They said they are getting very clever,” she said. “They don’t know how they’re doing it, but it’s getting crazy.”

Kim said she went into “panic mode” and didn’t think straight. The “customer service representative” said he needed to remotely access her account. She then watched her screen as the person on the phone took her to a website that purported to show how many people had been hacking her account.

The man then told her that gift cards were needed to get rid of the hackers.

“For each gift card that was $500 they would be able to clear out the hackers in my system,” she said.

The person on the phone assured Kim that she would be reimbursed 100%.

First he told her to go to an Apple store, but quickly changed his mind and told her to go to the nearest Smith’s. Kim said she was further rattled when the person on the phone knew her location and told her which store to go to.

All the way to the store, the person had her stay on the phone and kept talking in an urgent tone, seemingly to rattle her, and convince her that if she didn’t do this, her accounts would further be compromised.

Kim purchased two $500 gift cards and gave the person on the phone the numbers. She then received an email receipt that looked like it came from Apple.

“It looked totally legit. Had a confirmation number on it, came from Apple, that they would reimburse everything,” she said.

But then the person on the phone said she needed to buy $1,000 worth of additional gift cards.

Kim said she was “jumbled” and “sick to her stomach” and becoming suspicious of what was happening, but still did what the person told her to do.

Then when she was told those gift cards didn’t work, she was told to buy more.

“He was trying to hurry me because I was questioning him,” she said. “So literally, I am out $3,500 at this point.”

When Kim told the fake Apple representative that she was not going to buy any more gift cards until she got her husband on the phone with her, she said the man again tried to convince her she wasn’t being scammed.

But when her husband got on the phone, he immediately told her to hang up.

“I consider myself a really smart person. I don’t know what happened to me that day,” she said.

As Kim was driving to the bank to try and undo what she had done, she learned it was too late. Not only was the money gone, but after she went into an Apple store and talked to an actual representative, she learned the scammers had deleted all 4,000 photos from her iCloud.

“I had to reset every password from every account that I’ve ever opened,” she said.

She has also since learned that Apple will never call people out of the blue claiming a customer’s iCloud has been hacked, and will never email people except for sending receipts for purchases.

“As if we can monitor everyone’s Apple account,” Kim said the company told her.

Despite her husband being understanding and telling her it was just an unfortunate accident, Kim said she has had a hard time getting over what happened. “Still to this day, I feel so guilty for wasting (our) hard-earned money.”

She said her advice to others, unfortunately, is not to trust anyone.

“The sad thing is you have to not trust one person in this world except yourself, and I couldn’t even trust myself that day,” she said. “Trust nobody. No matter what.”