I want to spread awareness because this one ALMOST got me and I hope it helps people avoid getting scammed.
Today I received a call from Chase Bank (my bank) that I verified immediately by Googling the number. It was connected to a Chase in my local area.
The man says he’s from Chase and there are two potentially fraudulent charges connected to my Zelle account. He asks if I see them in the app. I check and I do not. He says something to the effect of “that’s great, our system caught them so early.” I’m thinking, wow—that is great! One charge is for over 1k, the next for over 2k, both to some Spanish name in Texas. I confirm I did not send these. The man reassures me and even asks if I noticed any suspicious activity on my account recently or suspicious emails/texts. This reassured me further as it felt like he was trying to help. He transfers me to the “cancellation department” after giving me a “case number”: 516900922. When I wrote this down, I thought it looked suspiciously like a phone number…
Man number 2 has a thick NY accent. My bank is in NY, and I felt further reassured of the legitimacy because of this. He confirms the nature of the call and asks for the case number. My head is spinning as I was headed to a meeting when this occurred. I’ve had to cancel cards before, and was annoyed thinking about the time in between this card being cancelled and a new one being mailed to me. To my surprise, man number 2 says I can cancel through the app and he walks me through the process. I am to open the send/Zelle option of my app, and follow the motions of adding “Zelle Fraud Department” or ZFD as a contact, and sending them my daily limit (2k) as a friend/family. Alarm bells are pounding as I’m thinking Chase would never have me use the friend/family option or go this route to cancel a card.
I push back and express my skepticism to the man. I am almost begging him to prove that this is real. He gets frustrated and tells me to verify the phone number and he spews out the local address it is connected to. Chase customer service is always very kind, so this was another red flag. He says he cannot put me on with a supervisor as his supervisor is out today. I ask if he can call me back in an hour, since I have a meeting. He then says I can speak with the supervisor, and I start calling him out saying, “But you just said the supervisor was not here! Man, you’re contradicting yourself, I can’t keep up.” He says I’m taking a risk and all of my money could be gone by the time they call back. He was great at instilling panic in me, but my finger kept hovering over the “review and send” button to send 2k to this random jumble of letters and my instinct would not let me. I told him I would put him on hold, to which he snidely said “have a nice day” and hung up.
So many red flags in hindsight and every time I tell someone, of course they say it’s an obvious scam, but in the moment it feels so real.
Writing this to spread awareness.