Apple has been sued for not helping victims of fraudulent iTunes gift certificates

Specifically, Apple was accused of lying when it said that there was no way to track or return the equivalent of gift vouchers.

In the past, there have been many scams involving prepaid gift certificates, such as gift vouchers or iTunes gift certificates. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) describes the fraud as follows:

” Anyone who offers you a gift voucher payment is a fraud.

Impersonators of all backgrounds often ask you to pay with gift certificates. Someone can call you and say they are from the IRS (Tax Office), doing collection duties or fees. The caller may say that he is from technical support, asking you to pay to fix the computer. The caller even said that she was a family member, was in urgent business, and needed money immediately.

But they all have in common is that you need to urgently send money. Once you purchase the voucher, the caller will ask you to provide the voucher number and PIN on the back of the voucher. These numbers allow them to instantly get the money you deposited into the voucher. And once done, the scammers with the money will not fly, often leaving no trace . ”

With store offers, scammers often buy products of great value like laptops and smartphones, then resell them. ITunes gift voucher scams often occur in a slightly different way, in which vouchers tend to be used to buy paid apps owned by scammers, so they can get 70% of the money. remaining after paying for Apple.

The back of iTunes gift certificates

According to the lawsuit, Apple told fraud victims that they could do nothing once the money was spent, but that was incorrect. In fact, Apple keeps 100% of the money for a period of 4-6 weeks, from the time you buy the app until Apple pays the developer. In the process, the company will be in a position to return 100% of the gift voucher value if requested.

In addition, Apple will take a 30% commission, so they will always be ready to refund at least that 30%, even after the crook was paid.

Increasing iTunes gift card fraud is a fairly lucrative activity. According to Patently Apple,

“The vast majority of victims do not report the fraud to the FTC. But even though a limited number of iTunes gift voucher scams are reported to FTC from 2015 to 2019, the money being cheated is also has exceeded $ 93.5 million, with a significant amount of money increasing year by year.This publicly reported amount includes the loss of only a small group of victims who have filled in personal information into one the online form that the FTC asked them to complete, so the figure of 93.5 million seemed to be just the tip of the iceberg.

Even if only 10% of fraud victims report it to the FTC (not including reporting to the local police, the attorney general’s office, Apple, or undeclared), iTunes gift voucher scams are also about to come. touched $ 1 billion, of which Apple still paid $ 300 million in commissions. ”

Many of the victims of fraud are elderly, so three of the 11 plaintiffs accuse Apple of violating laws designed to protect the elderly from financial harassment.

Reference: 9to5mac