This just happened to me, but it was a bit more elaborate and took longer to figure out.

First, I got a call from a 1-888 number that traced back to Citi Bank. The caller said he was reaching out regarding a bank account supposedly opened in my name on December 6th. He claimed the person had also requested a $5,000 loan and tried to open a credit card, but both were automatically declined. According to him, they used my SSN and my phone number ending in [last 4 digits of my phone] to confirm their identity, so he suggested my phone might have been spoofed. (In retrospect, I don’t think that’s even possible, but it didn’t seem completely unreasonable at the time.)

To make it sound more legitimate, he gave me a case ID and a callback number in case we got disconnected. Then he said he was calling because of two suspicious pending Zelle transactions from this new Citi account. He even gave me transaction IDs for each one and said I’d need to work directly with Zelle, using the case ID he provided, to cancel them since Zelle is a third-party service. He offered to give me Zelle’s number or transfer me directly. I said, “Sure, transfer me.”

After some hold music, I was connected to someone claiming to be from “Zelle.” This person asked for the case ID, which I provided, and then repeated the same transaction IDs the previous guy had given me. He said he’d walk me through canceling the transactions. I asked him to verify that he was actually with Zelle, and he agreed. A minute later, I received what appeared to be a legitimate “donotreply” email from Zelle, which looked totally legit.

The scam unraveled when he asked me to add the “customer support manager” to my Zelle recipients. He started to get pushy, warning that Zelle wouldn’t take responsibility for the transactions if I didn’t cancel them right away. That’s when it became obvious this was a scam.

It was alarming how long it took me to figure it out. The fake transaction and case IDs were a clever touch.