Action News Troubleshooters: Spotting video game scams

As students get out of school for the summer, they might be headed straight to their video game console to play anything from Fortnight to Roblox.

But there is a scam that is targeting your very young players and your pocketbook.

10-year-old Scott Cronin has become somewhat of an expert at spotting these scams.

After getting scammed himself when he was looking for someone new who would play the popular video game, Roblox, with him.

"I was scrolling through and one of them said free Robux," he said.

Scott says after clicking on to get the offer, he was asked for an email and phone number. Then moments after he provided both, connected to his grandmother's account, a charge for $89.99 appeared on her Verizon Wireless bill.

"I was like no, I didn't buy anything," said Scott.

And the code for free Robux turned out to be invalid.

"There's no question this is a scam," he said.

Karen Stratton says Verizon took the charge off her bill and gave her some disturbing news.

"The gentleman at customer service said they got 6 calls today. He said he personally got 6 calls today," she said. "I want other people to know that unfortunately they're targeting 10 year olds. 8, 9, 10... even younger so that nobody else gets taken advantage of."

To help, Scott showed Action News how to spot a scam.

He says to look for an offer of something for nothing or an offer from a suspicious source.

Scott says if you look at someone's profile, you can tell who's legit and who isn't.

"If they have no gamer points... it won't happen all the time but sometimes if they have no gamer points, they probably use that account to scam people," he said.

If there is no activity feed, no posts and no games it's a safe bet that they don't play anything and they just use the account for scams.

Most importantly...

"If it's asking for your personal information, just X it out, don't do anything with it," he said.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Roblox said, "Any offer to give free Robux is a scam. Never enter your password anywhere other than the Roblox login page. Never share your password or sensitive information with another user. Never click on suspicious offsite links."

Roblox also issued the following statement:

Sometimes players may send spam messages saying things that are not accurate. If anyone is trying to get your password, please report them right away by clicking the Report Abuse buttons located throughout the site. Official Roblox messages will be sent by Roblox through official channels like our Blog or the Notifications tab on your inbox.

You can also always tell whether someone is a Roblox Administrator by looking at their profile page. If that user account is a staff member, then they will have the Administrator badge on their profile. If they do not have one of these badges and are attempting to impersonate Roblox staff, please use the Report Abuse feature.

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