The Ventura County District Attorney's Office is sounding the alarm on a sneaky new scam hitting the streets, and this time fraudsters are using QR codes to swindle folks out of their hard-earned cash. 

These tiny squares packed with data, known as "Quick Response codes," are pretty much everywhere these days, popping up in places from ads to store windows. They're meant to make life simpler—you scan, you get where you gotta go fast—but, as Investigator Richard Elias from the Ventura County District Attorney's Office Major Fraud Unit puts it, "As technology provides customers more options to quickly and easily conduct financial transactions, what sometimes follows right behind are the quick and easy methods criminals use in an attempt to steal from those very customers." Crooks are slapping their bogus QR stickers over legit ones, and before you know it, you're on a fake site, ready to be fleeced.

The Ventura County District Attorney's Office warns the public about this high-tech hustling; to give that QR code a good look-see and think about whether it's sitting where it should be for the type of business you're in. Before you let your finger do the tapping to approve a scanned code, take a gander at the web address that pops up on your camera screen, and if things look fishy, put the brakes on and check directly with the business to make sure you're not being taken for a ride.