‘Are you looking for an Uber?’: Man goes out in New Orleans, some girls from ‘Texas’ buy him a shot. Then he starts to feel dizzy

It's a scary time to lose your phone. As cell phones have become extensions of us—containing everything from our personal bank accounts, to sensitive passwords, to our entire web of social connections—they've also become prized targets for theft.

As a result, scammers are becoming increasingly more clever about finagling people's phones away from them. The story of one such scamming incident is making the rounds on TikTok.

Mckinley's Situation

In a two-part video series first posted on April 13 which has since collectively racked up well over 429,000 views, Thuy An Mckinley (@asianredneck318 on TikTok) shared a chilling story about a dangerous situation her son reportedly found himself in after being scammed during a night on the town. The whole fiasco went down on a well-known street in New Orleans.

“If you're going to New Orleans, specifically to Bourbon Street, you need to beware,” Mckinley warns in her video. “My son was scammed this weekend.”

Mckinley says her son “and a buddy” were out at a bar when they were approached by a group of girls who claimed they were from Texas. The women bought the two men a round of shots for the two men. After partaking in the shots, Mckinley's son and his friend started to sense something was wrong.

“At one point, my son looks at his buddy and points at a group of girls that's dancing onstage and saying, ‘Hey, those girls are dancing super slow.'” Mckinley says. “And they both realized, too, that the sound was starting to get distorted. So they agreed that they needed to leave the club cause they didn't feel right.”

A Plan Starts Hatching

The group of women ran interference and managed to separate the two men. Mckinley says her son ordered an Uber, but his phone died immediately after and “the Uber canceled the ride.”

But oddly enough, a car, with only a female driver inside, still pulled over to pick him up. After confirming that he was “looking for an Uber,” the driver offered to charge his phone and take him “wherever [he needs] to go.”

“At this point, I'm assuming he's drugged,” Mckinley says. “He thinks that there's no harm here and that this lady's just being super helpful. Because he's not in his right mind.”

The Uber Scam

This is where the scam began in earnest.

While Mckinely's son charged his phone, the driver picked up a second passenger—a woman, who climbed into the backseat. After the driver asked Mckinley's son to help navigate, the female passenger watched from the backseat as he unlocked his phone to access GPS.

Mckinley got her son's password. Soon after, the driver asked her son to help pay for gas.

“In his mind, he didn't have to pay for an Uber, and this lady is nice enough to do all these things for him, so sure, he's gonna pay for her gas,” Mckinley says. “He gets to the gas station, he pumps her gas, and as soon as he hangs up the pump, she squeals, tires, and she leaves with his phone in her vehicle. She went into his passwords, found what his normal password is, disabled his location. They went into his banking account, transferred $2,500 from his savings to his checking.”

Blocking The Scam

Thankfully, Mckinley's bank didn't allow more money to be transferred in one day. Her son was able to contact Mckinley and get back to the hotel he was sharing with his friend. In the morning, he found out his friend had been scammed in a similar way. It seems everyone from the drivers to the gas station owners may have been involved in the operation.

“That goes to show you don't know who is in this ring,” Mckinley says. “Like, from the girls, to the Uber driver that may be canceled, to the lady that is driving them around, all the way to the owner of the store, and to the person that sells off the phone. Like, it is so big … So y'all need to be very careful if you're going to Bourbon, because the [expletive]'s happening, and it's real life.”

Are Scammers Impersonating Rideshare Drivers?

Mckinley's son and friend clearly underwent a deeply harrowing experience. But how unique was it? Should average people get worried about complex scammers?

In short: Possibly. Uber and Uber-adjacent scams are unfortunately not new. A 2016 story by USA Today details a reporter's experience being scammed 10 years ago; the writer of the article had been tricked into getting into a car that was, like the driver of Mckinley's son, not an Uber—and was overcharged as a result.

Moreover, Redditors fill forums with complaints about scams. For example, one Redditor shared on r/Uber that an Uber driver had tricked them into sharing personal information, which is obviously a huge security risk. So clearly, scamming via rideshares is well-trodden territory.

However, there are definitely ways to protect yourself from such scams. Reader's Digest published a handy-dandy guide on “10 Uber scams you need to watch out for,” ranging from never forking over cash to always making sure your driver has formally ended your trip in-app.

The No. 1 way any individual can protect themselves is double-checking key details. Scammers tend to capitalize off of the frantic nature of traveling to a new destination, and they target frazzled individuals. It's important to make sure that the car matches the one on the rideshare app. Never give out personal information, even if it's just a phone number, and never engage in financial transactions off-app.

Buzz News has reached out to Uber via email and Mckinley via TikTok comment. We'll let you know if they respond.

The post ‘You can't use your own brain?': California woman goes through boyfriend's phone. Then she discovers he uses ChatGPT on her appeared first on Realtimenn.