$1,000 (€760) Walmart Gift Card Scam Inflates Phone Bills

Shady Walmart gift card offers are not new, but every once in a while we come across another variation that tries to dupe unsuspecting internauts into participating in a survey. As always, the participants don’t get the much promised gift cards, but the fraudsters earn important sums of money from each campaign.

Circulating on social media sites, this particular scheme informs users that they have been selected to receive a free $1,000 (€760) Walmart card if they click on a link and enter the “FREE” code, Hoax Slayer reports.

To make everything more legitimate-looking, the advertisement claims that only 116 cards are available.

Once the link from the ad is clicked, the unsuspecting victim is taken to a site where he/she must enter the code provided earlier.

At this point things become more interesting because not all victims are presented with the same website. Some are asked to participate in a movie quiz and some are told to complete a survey that calculates when they die.

Whichever webpage they are confronted with, in the end, after answering all the questions, the cybercriminals request the victims’ mobile phone numbers which allegedly are needed to see the results.

However, a message on the bottom of the page clearly reveals the schemes true intentions.

“Cost $13,20 every 2days + $13.20 join. 25c per message sent. Carriage fees may apply. Celeb VIP subscription content for your phone: 1x daily joke, funny video, games, celebrity news & ringtone,” reads the fine print.

Even so, the much promised gift cards are never won by anyone and for all that money. In the best case scenario, you end up receiving a joke or other useless content for which obviously you are charged much more than it’s actually worth.