Scammers are using victims’ phone numbers to drain their accounts, but there are ways to protect against the scheme.
Victims who reached out to NBC4 Responds say their phones stopped working without warning – no calls or texts coming in or going out.
“I was on the phone with all my friends, and the line just went quiet,” Abdul Musa said.
“My phone service cuts out while I’m on a call with my sister,” Myron Keith Gibert Jr. said.
When the signal didn’t come back, the victims contacted their wireless providers.
“They told me, yes, that there were two changes on the same day to my SIM card,” Emmanuel Taveras said.
“It was, ‘Oh, well, I see the number’s been requested to be ported out,’” Chante’ Lee said.
The cellphone providers said they had received requests allegedly from the victims to transfer their number to another carrier.
“This was done without my permission,” Gibert said.
In all five cases, the victims were not the people who made those requests. The carriers eventually realized their customers were scammed.
“They even acknowledged in that chat that a fraud had been committed,” Patti Griffin said.
It really is sort of ironic that they’re using a security designed to protect individuals’ privacy against them.
Chuck Brooks, cybersecurity expert
What happened to them is called SIM card swapping or port-out theft, two techniques with the same purpose: to hack into accounts, steal information and…
