Doritos E-mail Scam Creating Huge Problems for Frito-Lay

According to snack manufacturer Frito-Lay, a fake coupon scam for a free Doritos (flavored tortilla chips) has become endemic, leaving the customers annoyed when they cannot trade in the fake coupon, reported THE NEW NEW Internet on July 1, 2010.

The coupons have been circulated in the form of an e-mail attachment that people forward to friends to pass it on, which seems a good deal. Finally, the coupons get forwarded heavily, thus spreading the scam so widely that it has now become very difficult to stop and almost impossible to track the scam.

Although a chips bag of worth $5 may not sound too significant, spokeswoman for Frito-Lay, Aurora Gonzalez said that the scam could end up in bringing losses worth multimillions to the company, as per the statement published by AolNews on June 17, 2010. She noted that the bogus coupons submitted in past few weeks have dollar value equal to 5% of the real coupon offerings by Frito-Lay for entire 2009.

According to security experts, the recipients of e-mails can verify whether they are being duped by the coupon scam through Coupon Information Corporation that can check the validity of a coupon. It should be noted that a legitimate coupon for a gratis chips bag would have a hologram along with two bar codes, and that it would not be sent by an e-mail ever.

The source and motive of the Doritos scam, which is yet another Internet scam, remain unclear. Scammers are employing each and every possible tactic to trick netizens. For instance, they recently exploited the Gulf of Mexico oil spill pretending as fake charities.

Scams like Doritos cost millions to the victim companies. The Internet Crime Complaint Center of FBI revealed that web-based scams led to a loss of $559.7 Million in 2009, which is more than twice from the 2008 levels. Around 336,655 people filed complaints in this regard last year. However, as a number of victims are too embarrassed to log in complaints, the actual number of victims is probably higher, said the experts.

Related article: Drudge Report Alleged of Distributing Malware

» SPAMfighter News - 7/12/2010