Around two months ago, one of my close friends received a phone call from a random number that had a “Well’s Fargo” name under the phone number. My friend answered this call thinking her bank was calling her about the savings account she had opened a week prior, but when she answered the call she realized it was for a very different reason. The person on the other line informed my friend that someone from New York had made multiple attempts to Zelle someone two separate payments of $2,000, and asked her if she had tried to make these payments. After she informed the “bank” on the other line that she did not try to make those payments, they began telling her that her bank account had been hacked, but that it could be fixed. Thinking that the “bank” was trying to help, she complied with what they asked her to do, which was to add a new contact to her Zelle account. After she added the contact the people on the other line began telling her that she needed to “reverse” these attempted payments and in order to do this she needed to send two $1,000 payments to the new contact and the money would be returned to her account. The longer she listened to the people on the phone, the less everything made sense, compelling her to hang up because she questioned why she had to send payments to “reverse” payments that never went through, and how that would get a hacker out of her Zelle account? Luckily, the “bank” was unable to scam my friend since she realized nothing made sense, but others may not be so lucky. The people who tried to commit this scam intended to infiltrate fear into their victims by saying their account was hacked and that they are losing large amounts of money, hoping the victim will be overwhelmed about the situation making them more susceptible to believing information that does not fully make sense. Some ways falling for this scam could be prevented are contacting your bank’s phone number since real calls will come from the same phone number, turning on the “Block Spam Caller” setting on your phone, and not answering unknown bank related calls because if there is a real situation the bank can contact you in other ways.
This is a very informational post! Another thing to know is your bank will never ask you to send money to “protect” it or “get it back”!
Thank you for the extra information!
It’s really scary how scammers are using fear against their victims to make them act irrationally.
I agree, they are getting very creative with their strategies!
Wow, this is such an important example of what to avoid when callers call wanting info. Don’t ever give out any personal info over the phone to someone who called you. No one will ever call you from a business requesting your info- when they do it’s a scam! Thank you for sharing this valuable lesson learned.
Thank you that is very important to know!
This post shows how elaborate and confusing scammers will get to try and steal you money and your information and gain access to you accounts
Yes, it is very confusing.