This scam starts out with a mysterious payment made out to you - most often by Apple Cash, but it comes up in other money-sending services as well. Someone that you don’t know (or maybe do know) has sent you money. Then they tell you that it was sent to you by accident, and you need to send it back to them - often because they sent you the last of their money.

Of course, you send it back to them, only to have the original payment disappear, thus leaving you that much short… and the scammer that much richer. It depends on the recipient’s desire to help to override their critical thinking skills.

This scam works particularly well with Apple Cash as it (like Apple’s Facetime) automatically allows scammers to spring this on their victims without either party knowing each other or being in a group.

How to protect yourself
Never, ever send money back yourself. Platforms like Apple Cash, Venmo, Cashapp all have mechanisms for returning wrongly-sent money - though either the sender or the recipient has to set the return in motion, and you may be better off contacting the platform yourself.

You may wish to see if there is a way to keep money from being automatically accepted/deposited in your account. For example, Apple will let you set your Apple wallet to manually accept payments.