Have you received a call from someone you know trying to get out of jail?

Someone in a financial jam who needs you to buy gift cards to help them out?

This phone scam is becoming increasingly common – or being reported with greater frequency.

Scams take different forms and morph into something else depending on technology and the “in” thing,” said Lexington County Sheriff’s Capt. Adam Myrick.

“The most important thing to remember is don’t buy anything with a gift card over the telephone.”

Scammers are calling or emailing seniors under a variety of pretenses such as their grandchildren are in trouble or they need to pay delinquent taxes with requests to buy gift cards.

Why gift cards? Because they allow con artists to buy immediately and anonymously. They don’t even need the physical card, just the numeric code or bar code on the card.

Unlike with prepaid credit cards, the transactions are difficult to reverse.

There are few reasons to use a gift card to pay a legitimate business or government agency, but scammers are crafty in their pitches.

Even businesses have been targeted, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Peter Santis of Keeper Security, a security software firm, received an email from his boss asking him to buy $3,000 worth of Amazon gift cards for clients.

Santis saw the message on his phone with only his boss’s name and thought it was a legitimate request.

Recalling his security training, he called his boss and found it was a fake.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, 33% of people who reported losing money to a scam this year said they used a gift card or reloadable card as payment.

The amount of money consumers reported having lost in scams in which gift or reloadable cards were used as payment totaled $74 million through September, up from $53 million during the same time last year.

Outsmart the scams

• Hang up on fishy calls.

No business, tech-support service, government or law enforcement agency is ever going to accept payment in the form of gift cards.

• Verify the caller. If someone who sounds like a relative calls and claims to be in trouble and needs money, hang up and call the person or another trusted relative and ask if it’s true.

Don’t fall for “don’t tell my mom” appeals.

If that person isn’t immediately reachable, wait to hear back from them from a known number.

• Confirm emails. If you receive an email asking for money or gift cards from someone you know, look at the email address to make sure it’s coming from the person’s actual email address. Even if the email address looks right, call the person to double-check, because scammers use data to spoof addresses.

• Report the scam. Immediately report the fraud to the issuer of the gift card.

The FBI advises scam victims to contact their local FBI field office. People can also file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center and with the FTC.