A TikTok scam involving an ATM and a New York City program for youth employment caused losses of millions in just a few days.
A New York Times article reported that payment cards given to NYC Summer Youth Employment Program participants allowed them to withdraw more cash from ATMs.
Payment cards are issued by the program to thousands of youths. Normally, the users can only access the earnings for that particular week – or at most a couple hundred dollars. The payment cards allowed users to withdraw up to tens thousands at each ATM. Between July 11th to 13th, a total of $17 million in fraudulent withdrawals was made on payment cards.
A total of 30,000 cards have been issued for 14-24 year olds that were not able to receive payments via direct deposit.
NYC Police Department Financial Crimes Task Force has now opened an investigation. Anonymous law enforcement officials claim that some program participants have sold their cards at $1,000 each.
Mark Zustovich is a spokesperson for NYC Department of Youth and Community Development which oversees this program. He says that participants could have been influenced by criminals into abusing their cards.
At the time of this writing, it is unclear what enabled payment cards to be used for fraudulent withdrawals. Also, who will cover the cost?
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Sources of Images include Pixabay Creative Commons & Midjourney
The report US Government Lost $17,000,000 within Three Days Due to Viral ATM Problem Tied to Jobs Program may change as new information becomes available.
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