Scam Alert! The Phone Sting

THE PHONE AND TEXT STING:

Here’s a phone scam someone tried to pull on me last Sunday, on Mother’s Day. I’m sharing this here and now because readers out there could also be vulnerable and fall for it, and therefore should be warned. The scam came perilously close to success, which could have cost me thousands of dollars. Read carefully, and look, and listen, for red flags.

I’m leaving out specific details of the *art of this steal* for obvious reasons, but I do have two active credit union memberships which constitutes the majority of my personal banking. Both credit unions are located East Coast — one in Washington and the other in New York. It’s also important to point out most credit unions are obscure, with limited membership. These are *not* Bank of Americas or Wells Fargo type accounts. So, this wasn’t just a common *phishing* scam in which the shitbag perpetrator uses financial institutions known to a vast majority of the country, then carpet bombs sucker lists with emails purporting to be phony “alerts,” which means a greater chance of success screwing the victims. It’s all the numbers game. Send out a thousand blasts, and a few will nibble the bait from the hook.

About 2 pm on this Mother’s Day, I received a text message alert claiming to be from my credit union. It asked if I had authorized a $699 charge at Target, the retailer. This was a text. It asked me to reply — yes or no. I replied immediately with a text answering — no. Sounds plausible, so far. Also, since my credit union is open only during regular business hours, it wasn’t possible for me to phone across the country to get a voice recording to verify if this was legitimate or not. Ideal timing for a scam.

A few minutes later, my phone rang. An Asian-sounding man was on the line. He asked me if I was the person who had an account at the credit union. So far, this all seemed legitimate. I told him — yes, I’m a member of that credit union.

The man was very polite and cordial. Most scammers immediately work to gain your trust, and those who succeed are good at what they do. He even wished me a happy Mother’s Day! What a sweetheart! He made some small talk about his own mother, missing her and also informed me she had just passed away. Poor thing! Turn on the tear switch. Having dealt with this credit union for the past 30 years, this was nothing unusual because these agents are very well trained and polite. At this point, I had no reason to suspect I was a big fish who had chomped at the bait. Hey, the poor guy just lost his mother….how could I be suspicious?

We went back and forth for a couple of minutes with him asking if I’d authorized any purchases from Miami, Florida. Of course, the answer is no — unless you count the $300 bet I lost on the Florida Panthers hockey team a couple of nights ago. He asked me if I tried to log in to my bank account with various devices — and since yes, I do have a bad habit of using smartphones, tablets, and multiple laptops to log in with the cloud I found this part of the exchange confusing. But the fact.that he seemed to know all this, it also lent some degree of credibility to the identity of the caller. That’s when the scammer stuck out the real bait and I was just lurch and nibble away from being victimized.

IMPORTANT: Read this part and memorize it! The scammer said he was sending me a “verification code” by text, and next all I had to do was *repeat the verification* back to him and he would tell the fraud department to cancel the transaction and that I was fully protected from any financial obligations going forward. He then repeated the often circulated line that the banking institution would never ask for any personal information. He just needed the code to verify that it was me.

How many of you understand –at this point– what the scam is? It’s okay. I didn’t realize either how critical this point was to the entire scam and very real possibility that I could have been ripped off for thousands of dollars and my credit union would not have been liable for the loss.

The way the scam works is this: If you use online banking services, you have a *username* and a *password.* Sometimes, we’re prompted to change passwords. When that happens, your financial institution usually sends a text to confirm your identity and once you do that you have the power to change the password and then once that’s done you have access to all of your finances.

Had I given this scammer the code, he then would have plugged it in, changed my online banking password to his own creation, and then he would have had *full control* of my finances. Yikes! At that point, he could have sent my money to anyone or anywhere. He could have emptied my bank account. And I was just six digits away from being ripped off. I’m certain that many people are trusting and would have given this information out, and then been scammed. It all sounded so legitimate. So real.

This post is long, but it’s important. If you know seniors or people who tend to fall for these kinds of scams, please share this. And now, I’m going to tell you a little more, including how I discovered that this charade was a scam.

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but the area code from the phone number was 805. My credit union in this case was a Washington DC institution …. so I knew all those area codes. But *805* is in Riverside, California and goes up towards Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo. WTF? I didn’t know this until I Googled it in real time while we were talking. That’s a huge red flag. Why would my East Coast financial institution use an area code based out of Riverside 3,000 miles away? I must admit that if this area code had been 202 or 703 I might have swallowed the hook and then gone down with the ship. And I hesitate sharing this, because who knows what scammer reads this and then they can perfect their art of the steal.
That’s when I, with suspicions mounting, asked the scammer to read back the last couple of financial transactions so I could see if he really did have my information on the screen. We argued back and forth and he said until I verified who what I was through that code he wasn’t able to share the details of my last few financial transactions using the credit union banking.

That’s when I decided to get angry, and I had to admit this was fun as fuck in pig mud. I won’t repeat the poetry of pornography of what I said to the scammer, but I figured if this really was a credit union representative and I had to apologize later that would be quite all right, and I was willing to take that chance. Anyway, I absolutely obliterated him with a barrage of insults. That’s when the scammer in my mid-sentence of insults cut me off and began laughing hysterically and then screamed back at me “I’ve made $20,000 this month fucking over people like you!!!!!!!!” I don’t know why suddenly believe this, but that’s probably the only honest thing this scam clown actually said to me. Sure, it’s very possible he made that kind of money ripping off people!

I followed this up with multiple screen shots of everything that was in the text and also calling my credit union and the proper authorities. I fear that this just goes into some invisible cyber file and no one gives this kind of danger and the attention it deserves. I want this scumbag destroyed. And moreover, why in the hell are we not prosecuting and punishing *white-collar crimes* like this which are equally egregious to low-level petty crime that usually ends in long prison sentences? That’s another post for another time, but I’m all for obliterating white collar criminals, even though the current (Trump) regime has gutted and defanged the federal agencies that investigate cyber crime. That just means you and I and everyone else has a much greater chance of being fucked and there’s nothing the government will do to help you. If you’re not getting angry about this then well there is no hope. Those are facts and they should piss you off, regardless of your politics.

So, maybe this post will help you and warn you and give you some idea of what’s going on out there. It’s easy to say that couldn’t happen to me. It’s arrogant to surmise that there’s no way that someone could pull off a scam on me. Yeah, right. We all think we’re way too smart the fall for the BS. But, they increasingly get more sophisticated and the methods do work on some people. There are scam factories operating 24/7 all around the world doing this right now.

I hope this long post serves as a warning and that many of you reading now will share what’s happening and also acknowledge how close we all are to being violated and ripped off.