In this age of endless spam and scam calls, I don’t pick up my phone for anyone unless I recognize the number.
Which is why, when my friendly neighborhood Bay Area credit union called, I picked right up. I’ve learned from painful personal experience that when the credit union is calling, there’s usually a fraud issue, and the sooner it’s dealt with the better.
What I didn’t know, but gradually learned over the course of the half hour phone call, was that the person on the other end of the line was not actually a helpful employee from the credit union. He was a scammer who was using every tool in his arsenal to take control of my bank account.
Hours later, when it was all over, a representative from my credit union’s fraud department — the real representative, not a scammer — said that stigma is a major problem around fraud. People don’t talk about falling for scammers’ tricks because it’s embarrassing. It feels like we’re constantly warned about how to spot and avoid scams, so when it does happen to us, it’s easy to blame ourselves.
But like sex education, talking about the scams we’ve experienced can dispel the stigma, making all of us savvier – and harder to dupe.
So in the interest of public service, here’s how the scammer (almost) got me, and what I should have done:
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