MORRISON, Colo.— An Uber driver scam is making the rounds in Colorado.
A Morrison woman says she fell victim to the scam less than a week ago. She reached out to Contact Denver7 after seeing our initial story earlier this week involving a Glendale Uber driverwho also fell victim to the same scam.
Jenna Owens has been driving for Uber Eats for a few months to help pay the bills.
“Unfortunately, I need Uber to survive,” Owens said.
On Sunday, she got a call from someone she thought was from Uber Support.
“I was just out driving like normal. Picked up my order, and was about to pick up my second order. I got a call from Uber. It says Uber in the call line,” Owens said.
The caller told Owens the profile picture on her Uber account didn’t look like her and told her she’d be reimbursed some money. She said she didn’t think much of it because her husband will sometimes go with her on rides. She says more calls kept coming from a different number. This time from a man by the name of "Joshua Bishop."
“He basically stated that my account was locked. I could no longer get into it, and I had to validate my account,” she said. “He walked me through basically the same push messages that I get from Uber. The same emails I get from Uber. He didn’t ask me for any information. You just plug it in and walks you through how to do it.”
Except those push messages and emails were not actually from uber support.
“I actually even have a message from the real Uber in the same text from the fake uber so how do you know,” Owens said.
The next day, she noticed $410 missing from her account, so she called Uber Support right away only to find out money was taken out of her account.
“They basically put a cashout card on my account that was not mine and cashed out of my account onto their bank account,” Owens said.
This isn’t just happening to people in the Denver area. An Uber driver from Portland, Oregon also just reached out to Contact Denver7 about a similar scam that happened to him back in 2020. The only difference, this scammer told him he qualified for a $400 bonus for his first 100 rides, but in turn, saw several hundred dollars taken out of his account.
After multiple calls with Uber support, she was finally reimbursed her $410. She also found out she hasn’t been the only person to fall victim to a scam like this.
“His exact words were we’ve gotten multiple calls from Colorado this weekend so it’s not just you,” she said.
Uber sent Denver7 a statement:
We don’t have any specific info on Denver. Unfortunately, phishing scams can happen anywhere but we have some pretty simple tips drivers can follow to avoid falling victim including this: We will never ask for your password, SMS code, banking information, or debit/credit card information over the phone or through email.
You can see them all here:
Three ways to help protect your account:
- Never share passwords, codes received, or your social security number over email or on phone calls received.
- Avoid fake Uber websites. Real Uber websites will always have “uber.com [uber.com]” in the URL.
- Avoid letting riders use or access your device when you are on a trip.
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