Apple investigates fraudulent iTunes charges worth thousands of dollars

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iTunes
Scam affected users in Singapore.
Photo: Apple

Apple is investigating complaints from dozens of customers in Singapore, who claim to have had hundreds of dollars taken from their accounts, supposedly for iTunes payments.

Some of the victims lost up to $7,000. Others lost less than this, but nonetheless had their available balance “completely wiped out” by the fraudulent charges.

“In early July, we detected and investigated unusual transactions on 58 cardholders’ accounts,” said the head of credit cards at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), one of the banks whose customers were affected by the scam. “Upon confirmation that these were fraudulent transactions, we deployed the necessary counter-measures and are currently assisting the affected cardholders via the chargeback process.”

It’s not clear from the story exactly how the customers’ information was obtained, thereby allowing scammers to log into their accounts and authorize fraudulent transactions. The report, from Channel NewsAsia, suggests that Apple has nonetheless nullified the payments, and is investigating the matter.

“[Potential victims of the scam] will need to sign in using their Apple ID, and will then be able to view purchases and assess veracity before reporting the issue,” Apple Singapore said.

iTunes scams

This isn’t the first time that iTunes accounts have been used to scam people out of money. Back in 2016, an almost 90-year-old grandfather was scammed out of $50,000 after being persuaded to purchase a series of large sums in iTunes vouchers, supposedly to help his grandson who was in trouble.

Police have even had to issue warnings that the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t accept iTunes vouchers after users were duped out of thousands of dollars while believing they were paying taxes they owed.

Have you ever been the victim of a similar scam involving iTunes? Let us know in the comments below.

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