NEW YORK, NY – A group of scammers is targeting rideshare drivers across New York City, stealing their cell phones, then transferring money from accounts on those stolen phones to their own.
The New York City Police Department said the criminal group is operating city-wide.
According to the NYPD, between Monday, July 4, 2022 and January 7 of this year, a group of unidentified individuals entered rideshare car service vehicles on 24 different occasions citywide.
“In each incident, the unidentified individuals requested for the driver to change the destination. The individuals would then remove the victim’s cellphone and flee the vehicle on foot,” police said today. “While in possession of the victims’ phones the individuals changed the accounts associated with the victims’ pay accounts to an unknown bank account and proceeded to transfer various amounts of money to an unknown bank account without permission to do so.”
Police are asking the public to assist in identify the suspects committing these crimes.
Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the CrimeStoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or on Twitter @NYPDTips. All calls are strictly confidential.