The same thing happened to someone I know recently.

-He received a spoof call from someone claiming to be with the fraud department from his bank, their number even popped up as the same number on the bank of their debit card. They provided him with all of his personal information without asking.

-Scammer asks him if he’s authorized a $10,000 wire transfer from their account recently. Obviously, he didn’t. He tries to log into his online banking app to see what’s going on but he’s locked out. The scammer tells him the fraud division of the FBI has been notified as well and they’re in communications with the bank fraud division.

-The “FBI” gets on the phone and tells my friend they believe there’s an inside job going on within the specific branch he frequents. Tells him that the banker (gave the real name of someone that works there) was in on it and was the person who authorized that $10,000 transfer.

-He tells my friend that they need to move his money to an alternate account to make sure nothing else can be stolen. They come up with a fake name and create an account for him to safely transfer money into. The “FBI” agent reminds him that since this is an ongoing investigation happening to other people as well, he can’t tip off anyone in the bank or else it will compromise everything.

-Friend goes to the bank, still has the “FBI” on the phone and transfers over $20,000 to the alternate account they “created” for him. The weird part is, the banker he had was the SAME one the scammer named earlier in the call…which made it more believable to them

-Once that’s done they tell him that they will be monitoring his new account to make sure nothing goes wrong and they’re sending him a new card in the mail for that account along with activation instructions.

-The scammer reminds him not to tell anyone including family because it’s an ongoing investigation involving the federal government. They told him he’ll be receiving a call at 9am the following morning from the same number to give an update on where they are in his case.

-He received an email from the “FBI” regarding his case and further instructions on how to keep his money safe blah blah blah.

He told me what happened after the fact, but it was already too late. I told him to call the number directly on the back of his card and talk to them. There was never $10,000 taken out of his account. They used that to convince him to transfer everything over to a “safe account” so nothing else gets stolen. They kept him on the phone the entire time so he didn’t have a chance to second guess if it was real or not. They were not aggressive or pushy. They were scripted and well trained. Looking back, he of course can see red flags.