Shoka Magazine: A Banking Scam Designed to Take ALL Your MONEY!

By Caroline Chase 

NOTE: Caroline is one of our adult students. Thank you, Caroline, for sharing your experience. 

I had a real scary experience earlier this week that left me feeling rather traumatized. I am ashamed  to say I fell for well nearly fell for a serious scam. Please let me share with you my experience that I  hope may help open up all my neighbors’ eyes. I never ever imagined I’d be one of those people that  would be fooled by one of those wiring money to another account scam! I heard of them and I  always thought no way! But I very nearly was! I am incredibly lucky that I saved myself in time. 

This scam was the “DON’T TRUST YOUR INDIVIDUAL BANK AS THERE ARE CERTAIN  PERSONS WHO ARE GIVING AWAY YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION TO THIRD PARTIES.  AND TO PROTECT YOUR MONEY WE ARE SETTING UP A DUMMY ACCOUNT TO PROTECT  YOU SINCE IT WAS AN INTERNATIONAL BREACH AND WE NEED YOU TO TRANSFER YOUR  MONEY TO THE DUMMY ACCOUNT” 

I will simply do my best to summarize and for those of you who wish for more detail and whole story  I’m happy to send to you. It all started with a scary looking alert on my computer with a phone  number to call that looked legitimately Apple but turned out to be a scammer and she proceeded to  connect me with “my bank” who actually were 2 scammers in disguise and who proceeded to scare  me to death about “2 fraudulent charges.” 

I am ashamed to say it went as far as I did actually go into my bank and tell her the “dummy account  information” but when she looked at me questioningly “What Caroline?” as I was saying what was  supposed to be the cover story about renovating property in Thailand. I realized oh my god what am  I doing? 

That is when it all fell apart. She was verifying the information when I asked her wait, wait! And I also  took time to hang up my phone on the scammer who demanded to stay on phone. I asked her, are  there 2 large fraudulent charges on my history?” She said no everything is fine and was looking at  me puzzled. I asked her to print my history. Everything looked completely normal and fine. I realized  I had been heavily scammed. I thank God I came to my senses in time! Afterwards was terrible, I  realize now it could have been much worse had I lost all that money. I felt seriously violated,  traumatized, abused, terribly embarrassed, ashamed, and humiliated. 

Now let me share the warning signs that this was a true scam. These people hounded me all  morning, kept me on the phone wouldn’t let me hang up. I also felt tremendous fear. A bank would  never scare you with the security measure to take to keep your money safe. And a bank of course  would NEVER EVER, EVER have you wire money! However, I confess, it all seemed so real  somehow, and these people knew the exact amounts in each of my accounts, and the phone  number was the same as on back of my debit card. I give these 3 scammers an A for the brilliance of  how they acted the scheme out for sounding like real professionals and having such strong  persuasive powers! I give them an F for Failure of Humanity. Part of their great strategy was they  gave me no breathing room. I did attempt few times to disconnect hang up so I could attempt in my  own way figure out what reality was, but they’d call back and sadly I had fallen under their dark  spell. 

Please dear community, BE CAREFUL, BE CAREFUL, BE CAREFUL. Always, always listen to your  intuition. I kept hearing this little voice that kept saying on way to bank, “just check with the teller,  check with the teller” Very thankfully I finally did listen to that inner voice and my angels were  present. One can’t be careful enough these days! Wishing you all a safe Beautiful Christmas!