SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A text scam is targeting users of the app Zelle costing them thousands. It’s so convincing one woman still fell for it despite her intuition telling her it was a scam.
ABC10 spoke with a Sacramento financial coach about how scammers are getting good at tricking people into handing over their money and what people can do to protect themselves.
“People who run scams… they look at it like a profession,” said financial coach Maureen Paley.
With the rising popularity of payment apps like Zelle and Apple Pay, there are now even more ways for scammers to reach people.
“Because they've reduced the barriers for us to part with our money, for money to actually leave our checking account, scam artists have picked up on that,” said Paley.
Even the savviest consumers are at risk.
“We looked at each other and we were like, ‘This might be a scam,’” said Rachel Adler.
Fraudsters call or send realistic-looking text messages appearing to be from Bank of America urging customers to ignore alerts about fraudulent charges or suspicious money transfers.
“It's very pernicious what they do. Not only are they posing as your bank, they claim to be reaching out to protect you from fraud and the fact that they're protecting you from fraud is a reason for you to trust them and follow the instructions,” said Sandhya Brown, assistant director of the FTCs Division of Financial Practices.
It’s exactly what happened to Adler. She lost $5,500 after she got a text asking her if she’d made a $432 charge at a Walmart in Texas. When she replied ‘no,’ she immediately got a call.
She thought she was speaking with a representative from Bank of America…
“He sounded very kind. He seemed to be very educated, patient, caring… all of these things,” she said.
But it turns out he was a scammer. The man told her someone was using the digital money transfer service Zelle to withdraw money from her account.
“'Did you make two Zelle transfers, one for $2,000, one for $1,500,' and I said no,” said Adler.
The man instructed her to wire the money back to her account. Instead, the money went straight to crooks.
“Then I noticed that at the top of the account, the $2,000 I had just Zelled to myself was now a debit,” she said.
It didn’t stop there. The man warned her she would get a text from Bank of America about a suspicious transfer but to disregard it, so she did.
“Those were the things that he was preemptively saying, ‘You're going to receive this text from the bank, and you don't have to pay attention to it because we're handling it on this phone call right now,’” said Adler.
Paley says scammers commonly play on two emotions — excitement and fear.
“That sense of urgency can be pretty powerful, but you don't have to act on it. You can take some time, I would advise double checking, triple checking the legitimacy of this person or this entity that's reaching out to you asking for money,” said Adler.
On its website, Bank of America says, “Bank of America will never ask you to transfer money to anyone, including yourself and will never ask you to transfer money because we detected fraud on your account.”
So, is there a way to get the money back if you fall for a scam? Unfortunately not.
Bank of America says if you authorize a transfer or send money to a scammer there’s often little they can do to help get your money back.
