r/Scams – The Door Dash Mafia: A Special Kind of Scam

Here’s a personal story to educate you on an increasingly common type of scam, but this one was on a huge scale!

Prelude

About a month ago, I thought I heard someone on my front porch. I go downstairs, and sure enough, I see a card wedged in our door. It’s from the police department of a nearby suburb, with a detective’s name, and on the back asks for a call. Believe it or not, this isn’t the scam! It was real. I thought it was about a car accident that had recently occurred outside my house that I had called 911 about. They must be looking into a road rage incident or something and needed witnesses. I was so sure of this that I called and left a message to call back. No need for a lawyer, right? (Actually, yes, this was the very rare case where I didn’t need one. Don’t talk to cops, folks!)

THE SCAM

A few days later, the detective calls me back. He’s very upfront and tells me exactly what’s going on. There is a massive food order scam ring in our area that they are working to bust. Our address had been used for two food orders over two days about 10 months back that were stolen, as in the card either got declined later or was fraudulent. Maybe even a stolen card. He said this is mainly done by people who are hired to do work on the house. They order food to the address, “pay” with their bogus method, and if tracked, it’s the homeowners who come up. This is no small operation; he said they’ve stolen over $50,000 worth of food to date!

Resolution

Sure enough, on those days, we had two men working on our roof! They had been hired by a friend of ours who has done tons of great work for us in the past, usually by himself. He contracted it out this time, and he got a bad one. Luckily, he immediately knew who they were as he keeps very good track of these things (it was a father son duo; he said he thinks it was the dad scamming). Of course, they no longer work for him. He met with the detective the very next day, and thanks to his responsibility in keeping track of who he hires, that guy(s) will soon be Door Dashing to jail.

Our friend felt horrible as he takes his business very seriously, and it was through him that we could’ve potentially gotten screwed. It’s all good though, unless he thinks I’m not going to bust his balls about him being fresh out of jail next time I see him 😆. (He of course wasn’t charged.)

Note that this is similar in many ways to the scam where someone regularly orders food from a small business, always sending someone new to pick it up, and uses the same fraudulent methods to steal it. The owner usually won’t notice the chargeback until doing the financials at the end of the month, and it’s very difficult to track it down to one person or a small group that’s doing it. I know someone who’s after a lady for $1,000 for just that!

I know food delivery is expensive, folks, but come on!

Link to a blog post about food delivery fraud: https://www.riskified.com/blog/the-dark-side-of-delicious-the-dark-web-can-teach-us-about-food-delivery-fraud/

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