Phone scammers are targeting drivers for online food ordering company UberEats. On Sunday, TikTok user kyra2much posted a video explaining how an order of McDonald’s apple slices caused her to end up with an empty virtual wallet.
In her post, Tyra explains how she accepted an UberEats delivery job and ended up losing her earnings for that night. “If you’re an UberEats delivery driver or just, you do Uber in general, stop scrolling,” she warned viewers. “Hopefully I can save you from getting scammed.”
Her clip has received more than 866,000 views.
Kyra became suspicious after accepting the order and was looking up the order’s address in Google maps when she received a call from someone identifying themselves as an employee of Uber’s fraud department.
The individual instructed Kyra to not proceed and to cancel the order. She was told that the order was part of a set up that was being used to rob UberEats drivers and that she would receive a $15 reimbursement for her inconvenience.
She was contacted the next morning by another supposed Uber employee asking if she had received her reimbursement yet. When Kyra said that she had not, she was asked to go through “a few security measures” in order to confirm that her account was secure. Kyra was emailed a code and asked to confirm it to the person on the telephone with her. This process was repeated three times.
@kyra2much Don’t let this flop! #fyp ♬ original sound – Mrs.Antisocial
She then received an alert that the funds in her Uber Pro Card account had been removed. The person on the phone then hung up on Kyra. “At that point, I knew I was scammed,” she told her viewers.
In a follow-up video Kyra explained that Uber did little to nothing to assist her in recovering her funds despite being contacted by Kyra immediately following the scam call and the fact that she was able to provide them with the scammer’s name and contact via her phone records. Kyra states that she was told by Uber that she had not followed company guidelines in canceling the order.
This seems to be confirmed by redditors on a thread in the r/UberEats forum. User No_Percentage9828 stated that “Uber won’t do a thing.” Many other commenters on the thread stated that this scam seems to be on the uptick with one user saying that scammers are going “full blast.”
“I’m more upset that I was that naive, more than anything. But it happens,” Kyra stated at the end of her second TikTok. “All I’m saying is use this as a resource. Don’t be a fool like me.”
We’ve reached out to Kyra via Instagram DM and to Uber Eats.
