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A six-year-old boy made in-app purchases worth about $16,000 on an iPad this summer. Apple refused to issue a refund to the boy's mom who failed to report the problem to the company within the required period.

The child reportedly did not know he was spending real money to get access to plenty of characters and faster speeds in Sega’s Sonic Forces.

Jessica Johnson of Wilton, Connecticut found a series of withdrawals made from her credit card over a series of months, posted by Apple's in-app purchasing system.

After discovering the charges, Jessica reported it as fraud to Chase.

Jessica said she thought the charges were fraud and called the bank after discovering the missing cash.

“The way the charges get bundled made it almost impossible [to figure out that] they were from a game,” Jessica told The New York Post.

Findings of the probe, however, confirmed that the purchases were authentic, and Jessica had to directly address the matter with Apple.

The purchases were found to be made by Jessica’s youngest son, George, who was repeatedly acquiring in-game currency for the game Sonic Forces.

Apple requires consumers to report potential fraud in-app purchase within 60 days

“[Apple] said, ‘Tough.’ They told me that, because I didn’t call within 60 days of the charges, that they can’t do anything,” Jessica said. “The reason I didn’t call within 60 days is because Chase told me it was likely fraud — that PayPal and Apple.com are top fraud charges.

Apple has refused to refund her money since Jessica failed to inform the company within 60 days of the charges.

Jessica said, “It’s like my 6-year-old was doing lines of cocaine — and doing bigger and bigger hits."

Jessica said her family needed to bypass defaults set in place for the account and in-app purchase verification for this to happen, without the child knowing the family iCloud account information.

Jessica, however, admitted that while she failed to lock down the account, she claimed she didn't know about them.

"Obviously, if I had known there was a setting for that, I wouldn't have allowed my 6-year-old to run up nearly $20,000 in charges for virtual gold rings," Jessica said.

She accused the games of being “predatory" in pushing younger users to spend cash.

Parents have been urged to make sure their smartphones and tablets ask for a password, fingerprint, or face when making purchases to prevent such things from happening. ---------------------------------------- Have a story you want USA Herald to cover? Submit a tip here and if we think it's newsworthy, we'll follow up on it.