Eliazar Rodriguez was running errands in Roscoe Village when he was stopped by two men with a laminated flyer outside a Starbucks. They said they were raising money for their little brother who was killed in a drive-by shooting and told Rodriguez that they were struggling to gather funeral funds.
“I said, ‘I know what it’s like to struggle, so I’m more than happy to help with what I have,’” Rodriguez said.
He gave the men $15 through Apple Pay and wrote his name down on a sheet pledging his donation. One of the guys took Rodriguez’s phone to make the transaction, showed him the screen to confirm that Rodriguez donated $15 and the two men went on their way.
Next thing Rodriguez knew, he got an instant notification from his bank telling him he had a $3,000 charge for a carpet purchase.
“I was just blinded by my naivety and my wanting to do good and be kind to others, only to be kind of slapped in the face,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez is not alone — he is one of dozens who have recently lost thousands of dollars to a scam going around Chicago where con artists will use a sad story to lure victims into paying them thousands of dollars when the victim thinks they are only paying a small amount of money.
The Tribune spoke with multiple people victimized by this scam, and while some say that the con is nothing new, the rise in popularity of Apple Pay, PayPal and tap-to-pay credit card transactions has allowed scammers to take off with thousands of dollars from people on the street.
“Funnily enough, that same week, I saw the same two guys at a different part of Roscoe Village,” said Rodriguez, who was scammed in November. “But instead of saying that they were trying to raise funds for their little brother shot in the drive by, they were now trying to raise funds for autism awareness.”
Since June 2024, the Illinois attorney general’s office said it has received “approximately 10 complaints” from consumers who were approached by individuals requesting charitable donations on the street. In these cases, consumers allege that after making what they thought was a small donation to a charitable organization, donors later discovered they were charged hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Credit card charity-based scams are common, according to John Breyault, a fraud expert with the National Consumers League. In 2023, credit cards were the most common payment method used in fraud reports, according to the Federal Trade Commission. There were over 114,000 cases of fraud involving credit card payments, followed by over 83,000 fraud cases involving debit cards and 65,000 cases involving a payment app or service.
“What’s a little unusual to me, to be honest with you, is that they are actually approaching people on the street in real life,” Breyault said. “That part is much less common.”
Chicago has seen thousands of fraud cases involving a credit card, but it is unclear how many of those cases were related to this specific scam. According to Chicago police data analyzed by the Tribune, there were 2,537 reported cases of credit card fraud in 2024. Only 17 of those cases resulted in an arrest.
“Unfortunately, that is also not unusual,” Breyault said. “One of the reasons that fraud is such a widespread crime is that it is relatively low risk for the criminals who perpetrate it.”
And dealing with the banks and credit card companies can be a headache, according to victims who spoke to the Tribune. Generally speaking, if a person willingly hands over their card to a merchant but gets billed the wrong amount, then it will not be considered credit card fraud but rather credit card dispute, according to the Capital One.
“I felt like they didn’t really know how to handle the situation, because ultimately, at least in the beginning, they said that it was my fault since I willingly gave my phone,” Rodriguez said.
Fortunately, Rodriguez was able to get his money back two weeks later, thanks in part to Starbucks employees who could corroborate his claim and photos he had taken of the flyer and the location where he got scammed.
But for some people, getting that money back can take months. That’s what happened to Abigail Grady, who got scammed in late December in Lakeview East and did not get the issue fully resolved until February.
When she was approached, two men ran across the street to tell her about how they were raising money for someone’s younger brother who was hit by a car. She was initially going to give the men cash, but they said they could not accept cash.
“I think at some point I was like, ‘OK, I’ll donate like, $10’ and the guy took out a card reader and he kept tapping my card, and the other guy is talking to me, chatting me up, saying how appreciative they are,” Grady said.
Grady later realized that she had four separate charges of $3,000 on her card, meaning that she lost a total of $12,000. She contacted her bank, but without a receipt to back up her claim, the process was much longer and more strenuous than Grady would have liked.
“And so essentially the (credit) card company was like, ‘We can’t do anything to help you. You have to talk to the claims team specifically,’” Grady said. “So luckily I got connected with somebody really quickly that same day. And he essentially was like … ‘Well, did you try and dispute it with them? And I was like, ‘Well, I looked to see if they existed or who the LLC that was charged on my card was.’”
The claims team then argued to the credit card company that Grady had tried to dispute the charge with the men who approached her, but was unsuccessful in her interaction. That argument was enough to convince the company, and Grady finally got the issue resolved.
Some victims have been less successful. Claire DesHotels was approached by two men with a clipboard near her home in Roscoe Village in late October. The men told her they were going door-to-door to ask for funeral funds for a young boy who was killed and even showed DesHotels a newspaper clipping of the boy.
Like other victims, DesHotels wrote down that she was giving the men $20 on a clipboard and completed a tap-to-pay transaction while the men asked her how her day was going.
But minutes after the interaction, DesHotels realized she was out $2,400. She immediately contacted her credit card company, Barclays. The company initially canceled the transaction and put the alert under fraud review, but about two months later determined that the transaction was not fraud because DesHotels agreed to making the transaction and did not have a receipt to back up her claim.
When the Tribune initially spoke with DesHotels, she was still figuring out how to get her money back. She was talking to her friend who is a lawyer for advice and even filed a police report in hopes that it would help her case.
“I’m getting married in September and my fiance and I are trying really hard to save for the wedding and it’s like I don’t have $2,400. I’m just living within my means myself,” DesHotels said.
A spokesperson for Barclays initially said that the company is unable to disclose cardmember account details, but a day after the Tribune reached out, Barclays told DesHotels that they were going to fully credit her account for the $2,400.
Keeping yourself safe
The first step someone should take after being scammed is contact their bank immediately.
“Most of what can be done to help people recover from these scams can only be done if you report it properly,” Breyault said. “Don’t wait a couple days or a week until you get in touch with your bank about this. Get in touch with them right away. And what I would say is, when you call, just explain the situation.”
While it may seem that filing a police report does not often result in an arrest for credit card fraud, Breyault still recommends any scam victims to file a police report as soon as possible. The more reports police have, the more likely they will be able to spot trends and target areas where the con artists are working. That report can also serve as an important paper trail for people when talking to their banks about the transaction.
Breyault also recommended people file a complaint to their state’s attorney general. “Typically, companies like PayPal and Venmo and others have to get a money transmitter license to operate in a particular state, and so that is usually regulated by the state, and the attorney general can help point you in the right direction on that,” Breyault said.
The Illinois attorney general’s office said they recommend anyone impacted by this scam to contact their local police department and to check online if a charitable organization is registered with the attorney general’s office.
Victims can also reach out to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, although the bureau may not be able to address claims right away due to the Trump administration’s orders to halt operations at the agency.
As far as precautions, Breyault said that if someone approaches you on the street asking for money for a charitable cause, it is better to not give money right away but rather to wait, ask for more information and then decide whether to donate. If a person is also asking you to donate specifically through Venmo, Apple Pay or a similar app, then Breyault said that is another red flag.
“By handing over a credit card or Apple Pay or paying through Venmo, it’s really equivalent to handing someone cash,” Breyault said.
For victims, Breyault said, there is often guilt. That was true for Rodriguez.
“I spent a lot of time just blaming myself and feeling a little stupid or very stupid and gullible for (ignoring) obvious red flags,” Rodriguez said.
But Breyault emphasized that no one should blame themself for falling for a scam.
“One of the things that is vexing for many people like me who work in that space is that there’s a lot of stigma attached to it. The people who are victims often feel like they fell for it, and the scammers bank on that,” Breyault said. “This happens to lots of people. There’s no sort of one profile that’s immune to these types of scams. … And so one of my priorities is to make sure that everybody understands that everyone has a fraud story.”
