Scammers Received $200k From Referring Fake Drivers To Delivery Apps

Federal Agents annouce the arrest of over a dozen people tied to a food delivery service scam involving identity theft, bots, and GPS spoofing all to steal money from referrals.

Source: Mike Kemp / Getty

As technology goes on to bring convenience to people’s lives, the loopholes people find to abuse for profit. Add the pandemic to the mix and you have people putting common sense to the side to feed their families. We’ve recently seen several people going to jail over PPP loans they couldn’t resist. Something about getting millions or thousands of dollars by illegally filling out a piece of paper is too good for some to pass up. Even with unemployment, we’ve seen rappers talk about abusing EDD before ending up in jail.

Recently, Federal authorities announced a bust in a scam we likely never thought would even exist. A group of around 12 men used food delivery apps to trick people into letting them scan their IDs which they used to make fake profiles to collect referral bonuses. They allegedly made $1,000 for each account with the schemers making $194,000 total. All of which is completely illegal but the group advertised their fake accounts to Brazilian nationals working in Massachusetts as if it’s legal. Well, the fun is over and everyone is going to jail.

The icing on the cake was the group-created software it rented to drivers to help snatch orders faster and cheat the system. All these resources into an illegal operation when they could have made a legit product. The length people goto to scam is unreal and they always end up getting caught.