Boston woman lost thousands to scammers impersonating internet provider

It was supposed to be a way to save money on her internet bills, but it ended up costing a Boston woman thousands of dollars in a gift card scam.

Emily, who asked to be identified only by her first name, said she received a voicemail from someone claiming to be a customer service representative from Xfinity, reminding her that her contract was up. When she called the number back, she said she heard a prompt similar to what she would expect when calling Xfinity’s customer service line.

“I mean the entire thing where the options were even the same — ‘Press zero.’ And then it asked me for an extension, so, I provided the extension, and an agent answered, the same that had been the voice on the on my voicemail,” said Emily. “They said, ‘We have two options for moving forward. We don't know if you've seen, but our pricing will go up this year, so, the one option is to maintain your current contract at,’ oh, and I forget exactly what they said, but at an increase of the price or, ‘Otherwise, we're running this promotion with Target, wherein, if you pay for the first full year in full, the second year is 50% off month over month.’ And they're like, ‘Are you able to do that?’ I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely. That's fine. Let's do it.’”

The person on the phone prompted her to open her account and confirm her balance. Then he asked for her Target credit card number.

“And I said I don’t have a Target credit card and they said, ‘Well ma’am, that’s part of this promotion, is that we will have to sign you up for one then,’ and I said, ‘That’s a material part of the contract.’ As the attorney, I was like, ‘That's the material part of the contract and I'd like to speak to your manager.’”

She said she was transferred to another person who claimed to be a manager, and he explained that they could accept payment through a Target gift card.

“And, you know, that was another somewhat warning sign for me, but one that I didn't think too much about because I had just so happened to work for Target when I was in college and, similarly, kind of on a contracting basis. And I was paid in the form of gift cards. And so, I thought, okay, well, this makes sense, and thank you for getting me around to needing to sign up for a Target credit card. I went and got the gift cards. I gave the numbers. They were like, ‘Great, thank you so much. You're all set.’ Didn't think twice about it.”

The next day, she said she got a call from that number again.

“And they had said, 'We are so sorry. You know, there is there was a problem with Target's payment system.' They are super apologetic. 'We've tried to let them know this is a huge inconvenience for you, but we're going to need repayment,'” said Emily. “And I thought to myself, this is kind of funny. So, I called Xfinity's direct line, but I was on hold for about 30 minutes and needed to get back to work and so decided not to. I just hung up and I was like, 'Okay, this is fine, I'll just go back and get additional gift cards.'”

She said they told her she would be repaid in the form of a cashier’s check, and it would be mailed to her upon full payments.

“They could only cut those cashier's checks for certain amounts, incremental amounts of cash, and I was just above that incremental amount. And so, then it continued this cycle. And every single time I tried to verify with them, I would say, ‘Can you please provide me my full account number?’ They gave me the exact one. ‘Can you please provide me the last four digits of my credit card number?’ They could provide it to me,” Emily explained. 

She said they prompted her to confirm the emails she received from Xfinity as proof that they were legitimate.

“Perhaps warning signs all the way through, but just kept on being confirmed in this sense of like, how would anyone have all of this information of mine unless you were actually in my account? So, I just kind of kept falling for it until finally I was at CVS for the last purchase of over $1,000. I've lost over $5,000 to the scam, and a CVS agent said, ‘Ma'am, this is a scam.’ And I was like, what are you talking about? He's like, ‘I'm positive this is a scam. Do you know what you're buying these gift cards for?’ And I said, yeah, this is Xfinity Target. And he's like, ‘Absolutely a scam.”

She called Xfinity directly.

“And the agent said, we don't have a Target promotion. And I was like, heart sank.”

Even then, she said, she got another call from the scammer, who tried to convince her that the real Xfinity agent she spoke to simply was not aware of the promotion.

“The most concerning part, particularly as an attorney, to me, is the fact that they had all of that information,” said Emily. “Oh, I am so angry. Yeah, it's a significant amount of anger. And that is why I want to do this and tell this story and will continue to do so. I am very fortunate to be in a position wherein this does not prohibit me from being able to eat right, and this very well would prohibit most people from being able to eat.”

Emily said she was grateful to the employee who alerted her to the fact that she was being scammed and would like to see more done to prevent others from falling for these types of scams, such as warning signs near gift card racks, training for employees to spot possible scam victims and alerts about these scams.

NBC10 Boston

NBC10 Boston

NBC10 Boston

NBC10 Boston

In a statement, a Comcast Xfinity spokesperson said, “If customers suspect a potential scam or anything suspicious, they should contact Comcast immediately to verify the legitimacy of the request. As a reminder, Comcast will never request a specific payment method such as merchant gift cards, wire transfers, PayPal, Venmo or Zelle or ask for your username or password over the phone. Customers should be suspicious of anyone requesting a specific form of payment, or personal information such as usernames, passwords, account numbers or any other personal data. Customers can report alleged scams to our Comcast Security Assurance team, which is a dedicated group of security professionals, at abuse@comcast.net. Or, for additional support, customers also can contact us at internetsecurity.xfinity.com/help/report-abuse or 1-800-565-4329.”

The FTC also warns on its website, “Only scammers will tell you to buy a gift card, like a Google Play or Apple Card, and give them the numbers off the back of the card. No matter what they say, that’s a scam. No real business or government agency will ever tell you to buy a gift card to pay them. Always keep a copy of your gift card and store receipt. Use them to report gift card scams to the gift card company and ask for your money back.”

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