New Scam Alert!!

Posted on Feb 2, 2019 | 0 comments

If you bank with Wells Fargo, than you will want to read this post for sure! A new scam has just hit the internet.

Just a day ago, a family member of mine received the text in the photo above. Looks legit right?

So he clicked on it and was brought to this screen, which you can pin to pinterest to help share the word:

Which again, looks totally legit. Thinking there was a problem with his account, he logged in… only to be redirected to a page requesting your bank pin. Once you enter it (and he did thinking he was on the Wells Fargo site), the screen just stays as it is and you can’t do anything else.

By this point, they have your user name, your password and your bank pin – which you should never ever have to enter anywhere except for at the atm FYI!!

And that is when we got nervous.

And called Wells Fargo immediately to be told, no they would not send a text message like that and this may be some type of new scam.

After careful inspection we realized that a few things were missing from the login page and that it was in fact a ‘phishing site’.

What is a Phishing Site Scam Alert?

A phishing site is one that is set up to resemble another trusted site in which you would put your personal identity information into. It is set up to steal your information. Sadly, the amount of phishing sites are on the rise and growing fast. As of 2017, they are growing at an incredible 400% more than the previous year and do not seem to be slowing down.

So What Happens With This Scam?

We notified Wells Fargo and thought that would be the end of it… wishful thinking.

Once we had entered our info, they had it all. And our pin and login information did not get changed in time.

An hour later, we went to make a purchase and discovered they had cleaned everything out in small ATM withdrawals leaving just under $5 in the account. There were several ATM withdrawals made in various amounts all under $100 to keep them off of the radar. But the money was all gone.

Then it was 2 days of dealing with Wells Fargo and trying to figure out how they had been hacked, because they knew our phone number and that we bank with Wells Fargo. And even though we had notified them before the money had been withdrawn that some form of fraud had occurred, they still let the money out of the account.

What To Do If You Receive This Text and Scam Alert

DELETE IT IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT CLICK ON IT. It may contain some form of spyware if you keep it. If you do not click on it and do not enter any information or respond to it, than you are good to go.

However, if you did click on it and you did enter your info, call Wells Fargo now at 1 (800) 869-3557. They will help.

You can follow these easy steps to verify if you are in fact on a phishing site or the real deal:

Type the website’s name into a search engine and review the results.
Look at the website’s connection type.
Check the site’s security status in your browser’s address bar.
Evaluate the website’s URL.
Look for bad English on the site.
Watch out for invasive advertising.
Use the website’s “Contact” page.

It is sad that we live in an age where we have to be so protective. And people feel the need to steal instead of put an honest days work in that will help their communities.

But the good news is there are lots of great people in this world, and thanks to technology, when things like this happen we can quickly share, get the word out there and hopefully help someone else to avoid the scam.

Please share this where ever you can. There are so many scams out there, hopefully we can help prevent someone else to not fall for what we did.

Cheers and Safe Banking!!

Malibu Mama Loves