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Wells Fargo phishing scam
An Austin woman thought she was protecting her money from scammers, but instead, she handed it right to them. Now she is out $25,000, and she says Wells Fargo isn't helping.
AUSTIN, Texas - An Austin woman thought she was protecting her money from scammers, but instead, she handed it right to them. Now she is out $25,000, and she says Wells Fargo isn't helping.
What they're saying:
On July 7, Jody Fillpot received a text message that looked like it came from her bank asking if she made a purchase at Walmart.
"Did you purchase anything at Walmart, yes or no, just wanting to approve the purchase and I was like, I didn't feel comfortable pushing on that," Fillpot said.
Fillpot said she did what she thought was smart and called the number on the back of her Wells Fargo card and no issues were reported. About 15 minutes later, her phone rang, from the same number.
"The guy immediately says his name and he's a senior supervisor with Wells Fargo Online Fraud Department,’ Fillpot said. ‘He knew my everything, my driver's license, my social security number, date of birth, all of that."
Then things escalated quickly. Fillpot was told her identity had been stolen and someone was using her ID at a Wells Fargo branch. She was asked to help the FBI catch the criminals and even received another text message about transactions made on her account and what she needed to do next. She was told she needed to go to Wells Fargo.
"He said, okay, you're going to keep me on the phone, but you're going to go inside there and we're going to be watching. He goes, we're able to see you, we've got somebody that'll be in there, and you're trying to get $15,000 out of your checking account. I'm thinking, I know I don't have $15,000 in my checking account. They said that the FBI will put that money in there," Fillpot said.
She went to her bank, and they handed her $15,000 in cash.
"He said, okay, well now what I need you to do is take the money. He goes, we work with, FBI works with Chase Bank and you're going to take it to Chase, and you're going to deposit it," Fillpot said.
The next day she did the same thing; this time it was $10,000. When Jody’s partner checked her account, the money was gone.
"We just don't understand, like Wells Fargo could have done so much more to protect us and they didn't, and now we're having to fight them to get our money back," Connie Adams, Fillpot’s partner, said.
A representative from Wells Fargo sent FOX 7 Austin a statement saying:
"We deeply empathize with those affected by financial scams. When a customer reports a suspected fraud or scam scenario, we take the situation seriously and thoroughly investigate the matter."
Scams getting more and more advanced, says BBB
Dig deeper:
The Better Business Bureau said these scams are becoming more advanced.
"With the advent of AI and so many language conversion tools, there's so much, there's many tools available to fraudsters to manipulate or clone voices, use language that's customary to the industry,’ Better Business Bureau Senior Director of Communications Jason Meza said. ‘Caller ID can be manipulated. I repeat that, caller ID can show numbers that will come from a sheriff's office, a bank. They can be spoofed."
Meza said if you move the money yourself, it is almost impossible to get it back.
"Sadly, 0 to 5% of the time do we see a case where people get money back from a bank, from a credit union. Financial institutions are arguably getting better at fraud detection and helping to play this battle with us and to fight the battle. But again, if you authorized it, if you believed someone was helping you, you made the authorization to move the money yourself, so it's harder to prove fraud existed because you performed the action and it wasn't a criminal coming in and trying to take the money out," Meza said.
Last year ago, Texans lost more than $40,000 in phishing and smishing scams.
"We want to help other people know this is happening and prevent this from happening to someone else," Adams said.
"If it is inbound, unsolicited, keep your guard up," Meza said.
The BBB said if something like this happens to you, report it to them so they can try to prevent it from happening to others and pass the information to law enforcement to hopefully catch the criminals.
The Source: Information in this report comes from reporting/interviews by FOX 7 Austin's Meredith Aldis