Some one scamming rocket clubs?

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SDramstad

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Last week I got an email supposedly from the President of our club (I am VP) He wanted me to go out and buy 5 $200 amazon gift cards to give to the members of our board. Dont worry, will pay you back tomorrow. And by the way dont call me I am in a meeting. So I called him anyway and he had not sent me that email. Just saw on facebook that the Tripoli MN group had the same thing happen to them. Any other clubs get hit with this?
 
That's an old scam... it's often directed at relatively new people who work for upper-level executives, because they're anxious to please the boss so they're easy targets. Those "new employee" social media announcements are a treasure trove of information for scammers. The email always says to buy the gift cards NOW because "I'm in a meeting", it's a "gift for a customer", and send the gift card number to some email address. At my former employer, one of the salesmen sent $2,000 worth of Amazon gift cards purchased through his company credit card to somebody like that.
 
I also am board member, knew we got hit but did not hear anything about gift cards. They said I should email the Pres and he was in a meeting. Lucky email was not responding so I sent a text. that avoided them getting my email info.
 
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Club websites that provide email links to their officers are inviting this sort of scam. It's very easy to build a web crawler that searches for president, vice president, and treasurer emails. It's sad.
 
Thanks for the heads up. This is something we should all watch for.
 
Club websites that provide email links to their officers are inviting this sort of scam. It's very easy to build a web crawler that searches for president, vice president, and treasurer emails. It's sad.
This is where my club figures it comes from. We get hit about once a year
 
Happened to me and my Treasurer. Pretty much seemed like they scrapped the email addresses from the club web page. Although the header looked like it came from him, the actual email address was not one I was familiar with, so ample red flags. It wasn't a request for gift cards but to send money via Zelle or Venmo, and of course, it would be 'reimbursed' later.

Grifters gonna grift.
 
Good general personal policy is to NEVER send money to anyone new or unfamiliar without actually talking (yeah, old school lol) to the person requesting... who you should already know well.

As an eBay seller, many years ago I once got a request from someone that they'll send me extra money and if I could send the extra back. At that time I couldn't figure out how that scam would work, but I told them that I'm always open to getting more money, but I'm definitely not going to send money any back! Never heard from them again.

Scammers SUCK and I hope karma gets them back.
 
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