Published: July 05, 2008 11:42 am            

AG warns beware of MoneyGram scams

Oklahoma and more than 40 other states have teamed with MoneyGram Payment Systems to protect consumers who wire money responding to frauds and scams, Attorney General Drew Edmondson said.

MoneyGram offers money transfer services by wire at more than 25,000 locations in the United States and more than 100,000 locations around the world.Scam artists often use wire transfers as a means of receiving money from their victims.

“Many scams have a wire-transfer component because it’s fast, simple and agents are easy to find,” Edmondson said. “We see countless frauds, especially lottery scams, that require the ‘winner’ to pay a tax on the jackpot before receiving their winnings. Wire transfers are often suggested as an easy way to pay the bogus tax.”

As part of the agreement, MoneyGram will place prominent fraud warnings on their forms, enhance its anti-fraud training programs for company agents and provide special training to agents with elevated fraud levels at their locations. The company will suspend or terminate agent locations that are involved in fraud or that do not take reasonable steps to reduce fraud. MoneyGram will also spend $1.1 million on a national consumer education program to be overseen by the AARP Foundation.

“We hope these steps will reduce the number of consumers who are duped by a con man into wiring money,” Edmondson said. “When it comes to scams, education is the key to prevention.”

The agreement with Minneapolis-based MoneyGram includes 44 states and the District of Columbia.

Oklahoma was part of a group of states that negotiated a similar agreement with the wire service company Western Union in 2005.

        

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