BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBRC) – Scammers are becoming more sophisticated than ever before and are now using your bank’s name in an email or text message to get your attention.
But they can also use a spoofed number to get you on the phone.
Such a call ultimately cost a woman almost her entire life savings.
Christy Taylor answered the phone when the caller ID showed her bank’s number.
“Of course, when it appeared, I answered it,” she said.
The caller claimed that the bank had found a fraudulent withdrawal from her account.
So he told her she had to take immediate action to protect the rest of it.
“He told you to take your money out and transfer it to another bank,” Taylor said.
It made sense.
She listened as the caller instructed her to transfer the nearly $10,000 cash to a prepaid debit card.
Once there, she says she gave the caller the new card number.
But by the time she took her money to another bank, Taylor says all her money was gone.
“$9,600,” she said. “I’m like, oh my God, I just got scammed out of a lot of money.”
Zulfikar Ramzan, head of digital security and threat intelligence at digital security firm Aura, says it’s easy to fall for this.
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“It used to be that a phone call had a lot more legitimacy than an email message,” he said. “That is no longer true. There is an equal chance that it is a scam.”
Ramzan says the callers are very persuasive.
“These messages often include a call to action,” she said, “saying that if you don’t take these specific steps, this bad event will happen.”
Instead of engaging with a caller, Ramzan says to call your bank directly, using the number on the back of your debit card and not the number they called or texted you from.
We contacted Christy Taylor’s bank to ask if they could possibly reverse the transfer.
But after a two-week investigation, it told her it couldn’t help, as it determined Taylor had withdrawn the money herself.
Taylor has no paper trail proving she was scammed, but she knows the money is gone.
That is our life savings that they took from us,” she said.
Her family has since posted a GoFundMe page for Taylor to try to get back some of the money she lost, especially since she’s currently facing huge bills due to her health issues.
So don’t rely on a bank call or text message that you don’t expect. Contact the bank directly or visit a local branch to see if the warning is valid.
This way you don’t waste your money.
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