Following a recent string of online scams victimizing students and West Lafayette community members, two more people reported being swindled this month.
A Purdue employee was reportedly scammed out of about $500 after he was persuaded to purchase a gift card online and send it to a scammer, Purdue Police Capt. Song Kang said. The employee told police that he thought the scammer was someone in the same Purdue department as him, but he couldn’t verify the email after he sent the gift card information.
In West Lafayette, previously seen apartment rental scams seem to be persisting.
A person was reportedly scammed out of $300 dollars by someone claiming to be a landlord for an apartment near campus, West Lafayette Police Capt. Adam Ferguson said.
The alleged scammer asked the victim to send the money to a third party, supposedly the landlord’s father, through a mobile banking app, Ferguson said. When the victim said they didn’t have that app, the alleged scammer asked them to send two $150 payments to another person on a different banking app. Once the payments were made, communication stopped.
“In each instance the email or pay,” Ferguson said, “(the) address either didn’t match the name of the person the victim was supposed to be paying, or should have raised some red flags about the validity of the transaction simply due to the…
