It is a gut-wrenching, heartbreaking feeling when someone realizes they’ve been the victim of a scam. Iolan Jeanne Cloud unfortunately knows that feeling all too well.
“They got me,” said Cloud. “And I always thought I was scam-savvy.”
With people becoming aware of fraud tactics, scammers are getting more creative in their deception and are finding new ways to con individuals out of large sums of cash. The latest tactic takes the manipulation to a whole new level. Under the guise of helping victims be protected from fraud, scammers are convincing individuals to send them cash for “safekeeping.”
This is how they were able to get to Cloud.
It all began when she ordered a new Amazon Fire tablet. After using it for a few months, she started having issues with it. “It got itself into some kind of a loop,” said Cloud. After booting it up and going into her Kindle app, it would close the book Cloud was reading after a few seconds and go back to the home screen. Then, it would immediately go into an advertisement to download a game.
Cloud did what anyone would do in this situation — she went online for help. A search of Amazon’s website for a customer service phone number proved fruitless, so she decided to search for one on Google. “There was my mistake,” she said.
After finding a supposed phone number for Amazon, she called it and spoke with someone who said they could help. “He transferred me to the fraud division,” she said. Once transferred, a man told Cloud she had been hacked and he would need to have access to her phone to see what the hackers had violated. “Now, I’m thinking I’m talking to Amazon customer service and I’ve trusted Amazon,” she explained. If it meant protecting herself from being hacked, she was willing to oblige.
Cloud was told to download the app AnyDesk, which would provide the man with remote access to her phone. This didn’t sound any alarms or raise any red flags for her because it was a familiar step she had taken in the past. “I’ve had that before when I’ve had help on my computer, but that was before all these scams,” she said.
The man convincingly told Cloud that she had been hacked by a Chinese organization that had taken $6,000 from her accounts. “He told me the organization used it for child pornography and that a Russian organization had also taken $5,000 to pay for a gambling unit,” she said.
As it turns out, this was all a lie. Its purpose? To convince Cloud she needed to protect her money and he was there to help.
“Everything that he told me to do and how he explained what was happening made perfect sense to me,” she noted.
Unfortunately, the man was a scammer.
After “investigating” her PayPal account, the scammer told Cloud there was evidence of several unauthorized transactions. The next day, the man said he would begin “repairing” Cloud’s PayPal account. “He told me he was now working with the FBI, supplying the information to them so they could track down the hackers,” she said.
The scammer warned her to not contact anyone about the matter — friends, family members, and especially her bank. Why? He made the accusation that someone at her bank was supplying Cloud’s Social Security number, among others, to the hackers.
“He said the FBI was zoning in on that so I couldn’t contact my bank because it would interrupt the trail,” she said. Cloud now knows that this was all untrue. Nobody at her bank had compromised her private information. It was merely a ploy to keep her from figuring out the true scam — getting access to her accounts through fear and persuasion.
