Call forwarding scam involving bank wire

[Dan Druff]

From social media:

Are you aware of what dialing *72 does?

I am posting this to inform everyone of this new sophisticated method of fraud. I want to prevent what happened to us from happening to you.

If you ever receive an unsolicited call from your bank and the banker tells you that your account has been compromised, hang up immediately and call your bank to verify that it was actually compromised. Don’t follow their instructions to dial *72 followed by a group of numbers. This forwards your calls to the fraudster who then has control of your phone. The fraudsters are able to approve bank transactions including wire transfers. The bank thinks they are communicating with you. You will be unaware and unable to stop it from happening.

My call came from a valid Wells Fargo bank number, (800)869-3557, one that I recognized and have used for thirty two years. The fraudsters knew detailed personal information about me and my account which led me to trust them.

As a result, my identity was stolen using suspected Artificial Intelligence (AI) which led to a wire transfer. My son is out $15,500 of his hard earned money and Wells Fargo bank is not reimbursing him.

Please share this with as many people as possible and if you have any idea what my next step should be, please respond to this post.

My analysis:

*72 is call forwarding, and in fact this feature has existed on phones since in the 1980s (except it was 72# back then).

However, Wells Fargo should indeed reimburse her son if this is what occurred. The burden of proof of identity is on them, not you. If someone steals your info and impersonates in order to get a wire transfer posted, it is still the bank's legal responsibility. It does not matter if you made mistakes along the way regarding protecting your info.

I have offered to help this person get their son's $15.5k back, and told them to message me if interested.

I wonder if she's telling the entire story. Hard to believe that Wells refused to give BACK the $15.5k that impersonators stole via a wire, but maybe she got idiot reps who misunderstood what occurred.

[NickyPipes]

Brother I heard your bizarre claims that if given the power you could personally take down and stop nationwide robo scam calls

Brother you could not achieve this goal

Brother you do not understand the type of money these type of operations produce and the investment they have made to keeping their operations up and running

Brother have you ever heard of Jim Jambroni? I didn’t think so pal

[Entropy]

It seems like the banks are inviting scams.


When I think of large sums of money protected by relatively lax security I always come back to Powerball type lotteries.
They haven't busted any organized crime groups trying to rig it, hmmm .
Another winner from FL or NY, hmmm.
Winners can conceal their identity from the public, like Epstein. Hmmmm.
Perfect scam but no one's even
attempted it hmmmmm.

[Sanlmar]

Wells Fargo is synonymous with fraud and scams. Usually Wells Fargo is the scammer. A slap on the wrist by friendly regulators and life goes on.

I heard Wells was again caught opening new customer accounts without the customer’s permission or knowledge. Cause why not.

Anyone still banking with Wells Fargo should accept their loss as a tax on the galactically stupid. Wondering whether Wells Fargo is at fault here is missing the point

[Bilbodoggins]

My take:
This is completely fake. Maybe to try to discredit WF, maybe just for fun. "Share this with as many people as possible" sounds like an old chain letter spoof. But if you got it from "social media" it must be real.
(I thought the Nicky Pipes cartoon was canceled)

[gut]

Wells Fargo is synonymous with fraud and scams. Usually Wells Fargo is the scammer. A slap on the wrist by friendly regulators and life goes on.

I heard Wells was again caught opening new customer accounts without the customer’s permission or knowledge. Cause why not.

Anyone still banking with Wells Fargo should accept their loss as a tax on the galactically stupid. Wondering whether Wells Fargo is at fault here is missing the point

This happened to me in my early 20's. I had moved like a year before. My old roommate still lived at the place. He calls me saying "credit card just came here in the mail for you"

Wells Fargo of course. That was a fun couple of phone calls. Had a savings account in high school with them, that i probably never properly closed.

Haven't fucked with them since.