Please, talk to your parents! We just saw one of our clients get scammed for $ 5,000 in gift cards, and then the bad guys said there was an issue, and they ran out and bought ANOTHER $ 5,000 in gift cards! They had every line in the book they were going to freeze their accounts, and the bad guys would get fired if they did not do what he said, and on and on with the lies!
Tell your parents and elderly relatives there is NO shame in stopping and calling you for help! And for goodness sake, if the word “gift card” is mentioned anywhere as a way to pay, it’s a scam!
Please don’t fall prey to online scammers. The newest scam is that people who already paid for “fake support” from scam companies who are usually overseas are now calling people they previously scammed, saying they are going out of business or “got caught by the government” and have to refund you. What they do is wire you too much money to your bank account; you’ll log in and see $1000 pending in your account. They will then say oops, we sent you too much money; please wire us money back or send an iTunes gift card or some other form of un-traceable payment. No company is ever going to call you to say they have to pay you to pay what you already paid them. They knew the people who had been scammed before and were too embarrassed to do anything about the first scam. Also, they are looking for folks over 60 who might not know better and have the means to pay them.
https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-spot-avoid-and-report-tech-support-scams
