‘Lost’ Boy Asks To Borrow Woman’s Phone To Get Help But Instead Uses Venmo To Steal Almost $4,000
No good deed goes unpunished.
natmac stock / Shutterstock No good deed is said to go unpunished. This is an awfully cynical way to view the world but every now and then, good people do really get screwed for doing the right thing.
Recently, Shannon Fraser found herself in exactly that position, doing the right thing and getting punished for her kindness.
A boy asked to borrow Shannon Fraser’s phone but stole from her via Venmo instead.
Shannon Fraser was out walking her dog on a Saturday in Orlando, Florida when she was approached by a boy on a scooter that was asking for her help.
Allegedly, the boy told Fraser, “My phone is dead. I can’t find my family or friends. I’ve lost them.”
Seeing that the boy needed her help, Fraser decided to help when the boy asked, “Can I please use your phone to call them?” Fraser also said, “Your first instinct is to help a kid.”
The woman quickly handed over her phone to the young boy.
Fraser said, “I just handed him my phone,” then described what happened when the boy used her phone to call his friends, “He had the person on speaker. He’s like, ‘I can’t find you guys.’”
The boy then asked Fraser if he could use her maps app, Fraser approves, “So he opens up maps and I’m watching him do this. That’s the crazy part. I’m a foot away.”
Being so close and watching as the boy used her phone, Fraser didn’t suspect anything untoward.
After the boy seemed satisfied that he knew how to get back to his friends, he and Fraser went their separate ways. Little did Shannon Fraser know at the time, the boy hadn’t just found his way back to her friends with her phone.
The boy had used Fraser’s Venmo app to steal money.
It wasn’t until a couple of days later that Fraser received a notification from her bank that two Venmo transactions had been approved, “one was in the amount of $1,800. The other one was in the amount of $2,000. And that’s when I stopped dead in my tracks.”
From there, it didn’t take long for Fraser to put two and two together, though she was still shocked that the boy managed to steal her money right in front of her.
Venmo is investigating the situation now and has given Fraser’s money back to her but she won’t actually be able to access it until Venmo’s investigation is concluded.
Thankfully it doesn’t look like Faser will lose any money, but it seems that she has been affected by the unfortunate experience, “They're preying on your kindness as opposed to just stealing something from you.”
Fraser fears that she will need to be more cautious about helping someone in need, saying, “I think our guard has to be up more and that’s the sad part of the story.”
Dan O'Reilly is a writer who covers news, politics, and social justice. Follow him on Twitter.