6-Year-Old Spent $16,000 Off His Mom’s Credit Card Playing Video Games

December
15, 2020

3 min read

Children by nature are mischievous, playful, and curious. However, there are times when they can get more than one gray hair from their parents. Not just for painting the walls, playing ball around the house, or breaking a new toy. Now the antics of the infants go further. That was the case with George Johnson , a six-year-old boy who secretly spent more than $ 16,000 (more than 300,000 pesos, approximately) at the Apple store.

How did you accumulate so much expense? Well, the little boy bought virtual accessories for his favorite game, Sonic Forces , which left his mother in shock, The New York Post reported.

The world of video games is a gigantic industry, which has a wide range of entertainment for all ages. Today’s children are immersed in it and like George, they are not aware of the expense that these can entail.

Jessica Johnson, 41, a stockbroker, did not realize while working at home from the pandemic that the youngest of her children had gone shopping with her iPad. It all happened in the month of July when George bought accessories, starting with red rings for almost two dollars, all the way to gold rings for 100 dollars. These allowed him to access new characters and more speed, so this was gradually accumulating thousands of dollars to his mother’s account.

There was one day, July 9, when George racked up 25 charges totaling $ 2,500. Jessica commented to the half joking that it was “as if my 6 year old son was taking lines of cocaine, and achieving bigger and bigger hits”.

When Jessica realized that Apple and PlayPal were withdrawing considerable sums of money, she thought it was a mistake or a type of fraud. Of course he called the bank to make a claim on the charges, but he says that in the way the money was put together, it was almost impossible to tell that they were due to gambling.

When the bill reached $ 16,000, the mother filed a fraud claim with her bank. But, it was until October that he learned the truth. She walked up to Apple and saw the Sonic icon, she knew it was George.

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When complaining to the company, it told him that he could no longer do anything because more than 60 days passed after the charges. The family’s situation is complicated, since they have to pay a mortgage and not even Apple wanted to help her.

“These games are designed to be completely predatory and make children buy things. What adult would spend $ 100 on a chest of virtual gold coins? ”Says Jessica.

When the indebted mother spoke to George about the magnitude of what he had done, the boy tenderly offered to pay. However, Jessica is aware that he only receives four dollars for cleaning his room. So his choice was to tell George that he “didn’t know anything about Christmas.”

Now the family struggles to pay the bills. She was unpaid from March to September, she works on commission, and her income is down 80 percent this year.