Lessons learned from experiencing a scam: Jim’s story

Scammers are always finding new ways to fool consumers. Jim learned the hard way how convincing they can be, and he’s sharing some tips to help others avoid the situation he found himself in.

It happened one day in September. Jim, a retired aerospace test manager who lives in the San Diego area, received an alarming email that appeared to be from his bank.

"Urgent! Call U.S. Bank immediately!" the message said.

Understandably concerned about what was going on, Jim dialed the number on the email, and a man named Daniel answered – though Jim knows now that the man probably wasn’t actually named Daniel after all. “Daniel” turned out to be a scammer who was trying to trick Jim out of his money.

The events that followed gave Jim a first-hand lesson in just how convincing scammers can be. He learned what signs to watch for to help spot a scam, and now relays his story to friends and family every chance he gets to help them avoid the same headaches he’s experienced.

A scammer strikes

The man on the phone that day, “Daniel,” claimed to work at U.S. Bank in the accounting department at the bank’s headquarters in Minneapolis. The man sheepishly explained to Jim that he’d accidentally transferred $1,000 into Jim’s bank account and needed Jim’s help to correct the error before his boss would find out.

“I’m a family man, and I have kids to feed and a mortgage to pay,” Jim remembers the man saying from the other end of the phone line. “I can’t get fired over this honest mistake!” 

The man went on to beg Jim to help him save his job by purchasing gift cards to be sent to the man. He assured Jim that the funds from those gift cards would be used to credit the money back to the correct accounts, and the account error would be fixed.

Jim admits that he was initially skeptical of the request, but the man seemed to have a convincing response to every question or concern that Jim raised. Jim looked at his bank account online using a link in the man’s email and saw that a $1,000 deposit appeared to have been made into his account, lending even more credibility to the man’s story. And what really struck Jim the most was the fact that the man sounded genuinely upset about the possibility of losing his job over a simple error.

Jim, an active member of his church and a volunteer at a local hospital, is the kind of person who always wants to do what he can to help others who need a hand. So he agreed to the man’s instructions, purchasing gift cards and having them sent to the address the man gave him.

Unfortunately, the man wasn’t a U.S. Bank employee after all. He turned out to be a scammer who used an emotional story to play right into Jim’s kind and caring nature, leading Jim to take a $1,000 financial loss that day.  Making matters worse, the man tricked him into clicking on a website that looked like U.S. Bank’s online banking page, but it was actually a spoofed website that was designed to capture Jim’s actual online banking username and password to help the fraudster gain access to Jim’s bank accounts.

 “It sounded so real,” says Jim. “The man was so upset on the phone, and he had an explanation for everything. It seemed so possible that this could happen.” 

The aftermath of the scam

As soon as his phone call with the man ended that day, Jim felt like something wasn’t right about the interaction, especially when the man reached back out and suggested that there might be more money that needed to get transferred than he originally thought.

So at his wife’s encouragement (“She’s the smarter one,” he says with a chuckle), Jim stopped by his local U.S. Bank branch to talk to the staff there in person about the interaction he’d had with the man on the phone that day.

He says his local branch manager, Rebeca Ramirez, listened to his recounting of the interaction he had with “Daniel” and she immediately recognized that he had been scammed. She helped him close the impacted accounts and got him set up with new ones.

Jim also talked with his bank’s fraud department to file a report and get the situation sorted out.

“U.S. Bank’s fraud department did a wonderful job,” he said. ”They were on the phone with me for an extended period of time, trying to help me out.”

In the end, Jim lost around $1,000 to the scam. And though the financial loss was a tough pill to swallow,  the time and hassle involved with trying to get his financial life sorted out in the aftermath of the scam was just as difficult.

He says it took at least 3 months to get all his automatic transfers and bill payments back on track after he opened his new bank accounts. With so many automatic payments moving to and from his bank accounts – like social security payments, pension payments, and all the day-to-day bills that need to get paid – it was no small feat to make sure that his transactions were flowing through the right accounts after his old accounts had to be closed unexpectedly.

Jim’s advice for others

Though Jim’s experience with being scammed was a tough one, he’s got some solid advice to share with others to help them avoid the same fate:

• For starters, be wary of any unsolicited message from your bank that create a sense of extreme urgency, he says.
• And watch out for communications that play on your emotions. A scammer might try to make you feel anxious, fearful, or – as in the case of Jim’s scammer – sympathetic.  When your emotions are high, you’re more likely to make decisions without thinking them through.
• Be careful about clicking on links in unsolicited emails and text messages, especially when they’re prompting you to enter private information like account login information.
• Never give out information over the phone to someone claiming to be from your bank unless you have initiated the conversation. If someone is asking you to contact your bank using a phone number you don’t know, do not use that number to call them back. Instead, use a known and trusted phone number to reach your bank. When in doubt, “stop at your bank branch to confirm that it’s real,” Jim advises. 

“We grew up in a time when we trusted people, but not anymore,” says Jim. “These scammers got after my emotions and my goodwill.”

Though this experience has made him less trusting of strangers these days, Jim’s sense of connecting with others and doing good in the world stands firm:  He speaks proudly of his three adult children and their accomplishments, he gets joy from his volunteer work at the hospital, and he still stops by his local U.S. Bank branch regularly, even if just to give a friendly hello to the people who helped him through a tough situation.  

Read more tips and advice to help avoid fraud and scams.