- Scammers in Utah are tricking residents into shipping expensive phones to them.
- Victims believe they are signing up for services, but unknowingly ship phones.
- Federal data shows over 1 million cybercrime victims reported $20 billion losses.
SALT LAKE CITY — Utahns are used to warnings about scammers trying to steal their money. But a growing scam appears to be targeting something else: their cellphones.
The crooks are not snatching phones out of people's hands. This scam is sneakier. They convince victims to ship the phones directly to them.
It happened to Curtis Sides. He thought he was signing up for new internet service.
The person on the phone sounded legitimate. They talked about prices and installation. They also sent Sides verification codes and asked him to read the numbers back.
"Yeah, they did. And, you know, some people send you stuff through a text with some numbers that you need to repeat to them. They did that to me," Sides said.
Then boxes showed up at his house.
Sides said the caller told him not to open them. The boxes contained the wrong equipment, the caller claimed. Sides was instructed to put return labels on the packages and ship them back. Then Sides got an email, as expected, with return labels.
"Yeah. And I sent them back," Sides said.
Only later did Sides learn what was actually inside the boxes.
They did not contain internet equipment. They contained expensive phones and watches.
"No, I don't even have an iPhone," Sides said.
Sides' story is the latest in a rash of nearly identical scams the KSL Investigators have reported: Customers receive phones they did not order and are then tricked into sending the devices to the scammer.
It happened to Nick Pendleton in January.
"I don't have $1,300 to spend on a phone that I don't own," Pendleton said.
It also happened to Terry Caselli in May.
"The level of stress that this thing has caused me is unbelievable," Caselli said.
The scam works because, on paper, the shipment goes where it is supposed to go: the cellphone company's real customer.
The scammer then turns that customer into the middleman.
Phones are an attractive target. They are small, easy to ship, easy to resell and very expensive. Some flagship phones now start at around $1,200 before adding watches, service plans or extra lines.
For Sides, the bill landed at about $2,400.
"Talking to me on the phone, I more or less, I think, gave them everything they needed, but I didn't realize I was doing that," he said.
Federal data shows cybercrime continues to surge, with more than 1 million victims reporting more than $20 billion in losses last year.
Scammers are also no longer limiting themselves to impersonating banks or government agencies. Increasingly, they are pretending to represent companies their targets already do business with.
They use that trust to gain access to customer accounts, order expensive devices and turn victims into their unwitting shipping department.
