UPTOWN — A rash of hacks to Uber riders' accounts in recent months has racked up hundreds of dollars in fraudulent charges — and left some locals fearful of using the popular car service, DNAinfo New York has learned.
Three victims of the scam told DNAinfo they were hit with nearly 20 bogus charges to their accounts for trips they didn't take dating back to late last year, including one scammed ride that totaled more than $200.
While the customers say Uber eventually refunded their money, the experience left them wary of trusting the company with their credit card information going forward — and say others should be, too.
“I like to think I’m a tech-savvy person, and I have no idea how this happened,” said Inwood resident William Mulligan, 49, who said his account was hacked last month even though he hadn't used the service since March 2015.
Mulligan said he got an email from Uber on Jan. 16 regarding a $211 20-mile trip starting at Dyckman Street that went along the Harlem River Drive, Cross Bronx Expressway and Henry Hudson Parkway before returning to a point near where the trip started.
He said he contacted Uber's customer service using the company’s emergency line, which is reserved for car accidents and deaths. The operator told Mulligan he wasn’t supposed to do that, he noted, but his account was reimbursed within 15 minutes.
He also said he filed a complaint with the Taxi & Limousine Commission. The TLC did not immediately return a request for comment.
Jenny Cecil, 32, of Washington Heights, said she was hacked last week after ordering an Uber on Sunday afternoon in the neighborhood.
Shortly after returning from her trip, Cecil said she received an email and text from Uber’s support team, saying the phone number, email and password on her account had been updated. The email instructed her to visit the company's support page if she had not authorized the change.
Cecil said she visited the page and contacted the support team through the site, and also replied to the email immediately to let the company know of the change.
But while she waited to hear back from the Uber team, she said, alerts on her app began pouring in with bogus rides taken all over the city.
In all, she said, 13 rides in total were billed to her account, including several pickups on Malcolm X Boulevard and Lexington Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, she said.
Cecil canceled the credit card attached to the account Monday morning, after she still hadn't heard back from Uber.
She said her friends took matters into their own hands and began sending Uber messages on Twitter, which finally got the company to reply.
"I couldn't log in to change anything, and no one was calling me back," Cecil said, adding that the charges were eventually refunded. She said she filed a police report on Thursday and spoke with a detective from the 34th Precinct about the fraud.
She later discovered that in addition to the $66 fraudulently charged to her card, more than $450 had been charged to a company card she also had attached to her account.
Another longtime Inwood resident said she, too, had her Uber account hacked late last year after not using it for several months.
The victim, who said she preferred to remain anonymous out of fear of having her information stolen again, only noticed the illicit activity when she received a call from an Uber driver saying he was waiting for her outside.
She immediately called the company, as well as her credit card company, after seeing four other charges on the account for rides taken around Inwood and Washington Heights that she hadn't requested.
She said Uber changed her password and told her the company would look into the charges, which reached $250 and were ultimately reimbursed by Uber.
“I’m not using them anymore,” the woman said. “I use local car service."
An Uber spokeswoman said that the fraudulent charges were resolved by the company in a timely manner and users were refunded.
She did not respond to requests regarding how account users' information can be accessed or whether the company had received an inordinate amount of complaints from Uptown residents.
"Uber's customer support staff are ready to respond 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” the spokeswoman said.
Meanwhile, Cecil she said she felt Uber's customer service reps were dismissive of her situation.
“Everyone is trying to blame me,” she said, “like I did something.”
Additional reporting by Ben Fractenberg
