Seattle DoorDasher falls victim to sophisticated hack, loses $800 in minutes
Apr 5, 2023, 12:39 PM | Updated: 12:50 pm
(Photo from KIRO 7)
(Photo from KIRO 7)
Imagine having all the money you worked for stolen from your account. That’s what happened to a Seattle man who was the victim of a vicious hack.
“These were very suspicious hackers,” said Mac Scotty MacGregor.
Mac is a DoorDasher and the victim of a sophisticated hack that wiped out $800 from his Dasher account.
“I don’t feel financially safe. I don’t even feel safe sometimes DoorDashing, because I don’t know what’s happening,” said Mac.
Mac was delivering an order from Wendy’s when he got a call from what appeared to be DoorDash support.
“They knew my name. They knew exactly where I was going to pick food up. They knew what the order was. And so, you know, they sent me then emails and texts to verify my identity, to give me codes, to give them to verify my identity,” said Mac.
Those codes let the thieves into his Dasher Direct account, where drivers’ funds are deposited.
The next day, Mac realized all the money in his Dasher account was gone.
A series of early morning texts show what happened: three transfers in four minutes, starting at 12:05 a.m.
In just a few minutes, Mac’s account was wiped clean.
Not getting much help to fix the issue, Mac called KIRO 7′s Jesse Jones for answers.
“Unfortunately, there are a lot of those for sale on underground forums. I mean millions and millions,” said Tim Helming with computer security company Domaintools.
Helming says he can’t speak to this particular case but says similar scams are flooding the marketplace-with scammers using stolen usernames, passwords and phone numbers.
And once the thieves get into someone’s account, running a scam like this is easy. They’ll know almost everything you’re doing.
“They have the opening to carry out whatever kind of social engineering they’re good at,” explained Helming.
In this case, getting Mac to approve transfers he thought were approved by the company.
“I think that DoorDash is giving me the runaround because they didn’t take money from DoorDash,” said Mac. “I’m an independent contractor, and I feel like I have no protections and no support from DoorDash.”
After Mac called us, we contacted DoorDash to ask them what was happening.
The company responded saying, “We’ve spoken with the Dasher to offer our support and fully reimbursed the funds.”
Mac is happy about getting his money back. But he wants to make sure this never happens to any other Dasher again.
