I Got Scammed! It’s Happening To A Lot of Us
It’s happening more and more. Scammers are becoming for astute to our defenses and will do anything to separate you from your money. It happened to me last week. I got a call from my bank, TD Bank in the caller ID and their 800 number on the screen. The man, who was very nice, told me there was some suspicious activity on my account. Someone was attempting to wire money to Atlanta and was that me? No! It was not me, I told him. I don’t even know anyone in Atlanta. Okay, he can take care of it, he assured me. Let me just confirm a few details. This is where it all went wrong. He had info of mine that a bank should have – name, address, etc. He just needed the last 4 of my debit card to confirm it was me. BOOM – I got bamboozled. Thankfully, I immediately felt I had done something wrong, went to log on to my online banking and was locked out! Then I had the presence of mind to hit reset password and went in and changed my username and password. While the real Fraud department at TD Bank assured me that my quick thinking saved me a lot of grief, it still was long enough for them to make a Zelle transfer that I now have to fight to get back.
Why am I telling you about my major mistake? So you avoid making one of your own. A new study finds in America, a record $6.9 billion was lost to online scams in 2021, up from $3.5 billion in 2019. The amount lost has nearly doubled since the start of the global pandemic. Pennsylvania is the No. 5 most-scammed state with 17,262 victims losing $207 million in 2021, up from $109 million in 2020. The average victim in the state lost a staggering $11,991 last year.
It wasn’t quite so back for me…but it is going to take a minute to get the money back. How do you keep yourself safe? Here are few tips:
