The Florida Department of Agriculture and Services (FDACS) is issuing a warning against auto marketing robocall scams* that ask customers to pay for services through gift cards and cryptocurrencies.
*Robocall is an automated phone call delivering a recorded message
This follows consumer complaints that robocalls use pre-recorded calls to market and sell fraudulent services, and the Enforcement Bureau continues to order phone companies to refrain from carrying robocall traffic.
Therefore, the FDACS newsletter presents five characteristics of 'red flags' aimed at detecting fraud regardless of the method used by the scammer in contacting the victim.
Also stressed, the payment method often used by scammers is to ask the victim to pay with a gift card or cryptocurrency.
As such, Florida residents are asked to be cautious when making crypto payments, while FDACS insists that no government official will ask for personal information such as a Social Security number or credit card.
He added that only scammers use one of those payment types and immediately after the victim sends, the victim may not get it back.
Although FDACS mentions that actually tracking cryptocurrency funds from hackers is impossible, many companies such as Velodrome and Curve Finance have managed to recover stolen funds thanks to the applicability of blockchain technology.
