Ever since June 12, Andrea Álvarez, a famous Argentine musician, feels like she’s been rebuilding her entire life. It all started when a man stole her phone on the bus in Buenos Aires. Right after the theft, people warned her to block her Mercado Pago account as soon as possible. They were referring to the payments app which Álvarez — alongside millions of other Argentines — uses to store large amounts of her money. “First a lady, then a boy, then another person — four or five people approached me about it,” she told Rest of World.
The scammers contacted her soon after, posing as Mercado Pago representatives. “They told me that thieves were trying to access my accounts, that they were taking out loans in my name,” she recalled. Álvarez panicked and gave them enough data for them to empty her accounts. “They got me,” she lamented.
Álvarez lost all of her savings through this payment app scam. She hasn’t recovered her money yet, but she’s pursuing justice after filing a suit both against Mercado Libre — Mercado Pago’s parent company — and her bank, which was linked to her app’s account. When she made her story public, dozens of users who had been victims of exactly the same scam reached out: They were all Argentines who had lost everything after depositing all their money in, or connecting their debit cards to, payment apps outside the official banking system.
With Argentina close to reaching an inflation rate of…
