A TikToker alleges he uncovered a Venmo scam just quick enough for him to avoid it.
Caren Babaknia was unsettled when he got a Venmo request from a friend for a few hundred dollars. He didn’t think it was like her, nor did he buy her reasoning in the message. Babaknia decided to get to bottom of things by reaching out directly to his friend.
Babaknia called it the “biggest scam I’ve seen on Venmo.” One day he received a request from his friend Erin Reamey. It was for $300.
“At the store. I left my purse at home. I’ll send it back as soon as I get back home. Please and thank you? Appreciate it!” the request said.
But he found the message to be pretty unusual behavior for Reamey
“This doesn’t sound like her. Also, she never carries around a purse. So I was like, let me just text her,” he explained.
It turned out Reamey had no clue about the Venmo request. Upon further investigation, someone managed to clone her profile completely. It had the same username and photo; the only giveaway was that the account had no friends, while Reamey had 19.
“How is someone copying the exact username and requesting money? How? What?” Babaknia said.
Many users in the comments claimed similar things had happened to them or people they knew.
“This happened to me too! You need to make your Venmo private or else people can do this to you,” a person advised.
“THIS HAPPENED TO ME. I was the friend, luckily everyone checked with me before sending,” another wrote.
“This happened to my friend she was so embarrassed that people thought she was requesting money!” someone added.
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