A Pennsylvania woman who has never used CashApp was arrested on a warrant from a thousand miles away, after a scammer opened an account in her name with her Social Security number.
On an afternoon in April, Amanda Smith opened her door to the local sheriff's department in upstate Pennsylvania, holding a warrant for her arrest. The charge was computer fraud, and the alleged crime had happened more than a thousand miles away, in Arkansas. She had never been to Arkansas.
The real culprit had her Social Security number
She was handcuffed and spent three nights in the local jail. Only later did she learn that a scammer had tricked someone on Facebook Marketplace into sending $1,000 to a CashApp account in her name, opened with her Social Security number and date of birth. Smith says she has never used CashApp.
The scammer walks, the platform says nothing
For six months she has had to prove her innocence in a criminal case while asking CashApp for information about the account. The company refuses, because she cannot prove she owns it. A scammer conjured up an account in her name, and she is the one doing time for it and running its errands.
Why it matters
Identity theft costs more than money: it hands you a criminal record written by someone else. When a platform pushes the burden of proving who you are onto the victim, what gets lost first is not cash but freedom and half a year of a life.
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