Two victims lose more than $7,000 in Sioux Falls gift card scams

Two people recently lost thousands of dollars after falling victim to separate gift card scams.

Sioux Falls Police spokesman Sam Clemens told media during a Thursday police briefing the department received two reports of scam incidents after the targeted individuals lost more than $7,000.

One scam, reported Wednesday, involved a person calling a 53-year-old woman from Sioux Falls and claiming to be a local law enforcement officer, Clemens said. The scammer told the victim she had a warrant and needed to pay money in gift cards.

The victim reportedly gave more than $1,000 in gift cards before she realized it was a scam, Clemens added.

"With the scammers, there's always a sense of immediacy. 'Needs to happen now. Something needs to be done now,'" Clemens said. "The biggest thing is if they ask for gift cards or cyber currency. That's an automatic red flag."

This police-related scam report comes a day after the department warned of similar phone calls where scammers impersonated Sioux Falls police officers.

Clemens clarified the department has not noticed any rise or fall in the frequency of phone call scams, however.

"There's a few main ones that kind of circulate from time to time," he said. "The law enforcement one is one that pops up. It's not increasing, it's not decreasing. It's just there."

A second scam involving a 77-year-old Rapid City woman was also reported Wednesday. The victim, who was in Sioux Falls when the incident happened and when she reported the crime, gave more than $6,000 in gift cards to scammers pretending to be a friend, Clemens said.

The scammers contacted the woman over Facebook Messenger and sent message advertising for a type of "sweepstakes."

"Essentially, there was a promise that they would receive a lot of money if they paid some money in advance," Clemens explained. "After the first wave, the scammers kept saying that they need more, needed more, and then the victim realized that it was a scam and then cut off communication from there."

Clemens said scammers are usually able to obfuscate their identity, which often makes it difficult for investigators to back-trace those carrying out the scam.

Clemens guessed authorities are unable to track down the scammers in more than 90% of cases.

"It's a numbers game. The more people they contact, the better chance that they're going to find somebody that's going to fall victim," Clemens said. "With the case of phone calls, a lot of the times the numbers are cloned or spoofed, so they don't come back to the real number where it appears to be. And once these people send that information like the numbers on the gift cards. It's virtually untraceable."

Still, Clemens advises those who receive a strange phone call or social media request and are uncertain of its origin to contact your local police or sheriff's office.

The Better Business Bureau also offers a free scam tracker tool to lookup and report potential scams at bbb.org/scamtracker.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Two victims lose more than $7,000 in Sioux Falls gift card scams