June 27, 2022 at 12:47 p.m.
One More Scammer Attempt
Recently, a good friend of mine shared how his parents were cleverly tricked into thinking they needed to make account changes due to questionable debits from Jacksonville, Florida amounting to $500.
The caller ID number was the same as on back of their debit card. The caller knew enough personal information to make the claim sound even more legitimate.
The professional and kindly sounding voice calmly assured them these false charges would be taken care of swiftly but provided them a new password to be used. Then, he requested they not take other action on that account for a few days stating it would take a while to get the changes reversed.
Later in the day, my friend's parents called to chat about their great-grandson. Before hanging up, they mentioned their conversation with a representative from their credit union. During the next few minutes, his dad went over what had transpired and was immediately embarrassed when realizing a new password had been provided by the caller. Immediately, he logged into his account and noticed the transfer of $1,000 twice.
Then, he called the same debit card number as on his card but got a legitimate person this time. The password and username were quickly changed as well as their checking account number. It was not an easy fix with all the direct deposits going in the account, in particular Social Security.
The good news is that all illegitimate actions were stopped before the scammers could actually receive any money; the good news is that the parents of my friend are willing to share their story to make sure it does not happen to someone else.
The bad news is that dishonest and bad people tried to take money from honest and good people. It is happening too frequently, and there are many unfortunate stories. Billions are being taken yearly from Americans due to fraudulent schemes. According to an article by Megan Leonhardt, 29.8 billion was stolen through phone scams in 2021 with 1-3 people as victims. Of course, there are many other scams not involving a phone.
I still remember when someone was pretending to be me with a false email that looked very similar. Fortunately, none of my family and friends responded to the email when money was requested to help me.
On trips, I have given money to strangers asking for special help late at night only to question why afterward.
One of our daughters had her Facebook page hacked and elected to not join again.
We all must constantly be on guard while communicating with our family and friends about these never ending pursuits of our hard earned money, pursuits that haunt and hurt in so many ways.
