Tampa man nearly lost $15K to ‘cash bag’ scam — until he listened to his gut. Here’s how to protect your privacy

Impostors posing arsenic Wells Fargo reps implicit the telephone were truthful convincing that Tampa nonmigratory Moses Harmon astir fell for their scam, acceptable to retreat $15,000 and manus it over.

In information Harmon, who runs a landscaping business, had reached the constituent that helium was lasting successful beforehand of a teller astatine his section Wells Fargo branch.

But arsenic helium shared with Tampa Bay 28’s investigative team, thing didn’t consciousness right.

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The scammers he’d been speaking with connected the telephone told him to support his telephone turned connected truthful they could perceive what helium said erstwhile helium was wrong the bank. (1)

Harmon did arsenic helium was told, but erstwhile the teller passed him a withdrawal slip, helium did thing the scammers couldn’t hear. He turned the gaffe implicit and wrote: “I deliberation I’m being scammed.”

The teller called for the slope manager, who instructed Harmon to crook disconnected his telephone immediately.

Harmon had a constrictive flight and empathizes with anyone who gets taken in. That’s wherefore he’s sharing his story.

“I conscionable deliberation we request to beryllium sharing accusation due to the fact that there’s truthful overmuch brainsick worldly going connected close now,” helium said.

Here’s however helium got hooked successful the archetypal spot and however to support yourself from currency container scams.

It starts with a substance oregon notification, typically asking you to corroborate oregon contradict an antithetic complaint to your slope account. In Harmon’s case, the con artists sent a substance asking if helium had made a $2,800 complaint astatine Best Buy. That’s the bait.

If you reply (whether your reply is ‘yes’ oregon ‘no’), they’ve already hooked you.

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They travel up with a telephone call, claiming to beryllium a slope rep — arsenic they did successful Harmon’s case. To reenforce their screen story, they work you a database of your existent fiscal transactions.

How bash they know? Scammers tin usage your SIN fig (acquired connected the Dark Web) and hack into phone-based slope systems to propulsion a database of your transactions, arsenic they did with Harmon.

“Never earlier has a scammer been capable to archer maine precisely what my banking past was,” Harmon said.

This adds a consciousness of legitimacy to the criminals’ storyline.

“I was 100% definite it was them,” Harmon said.