Scams are getting more and more sophisticated these days. I mean, there's literally websites that look indistinguishable from popular ones that ask you to run dangerous code.
And it's not just on the computer, either - the era of the telephone scam is still very much so alive. But lots of people think that they're immune to these sorts of deceptive tactics.
But if the case of CBS correspondent Matt Gutman is anything to go by, even very intelligent people can be fooled. As reported by the New York Post, he received a legitimate-sounding phone call claiming to be from his bank's "fraud protection" department.
And things sounded super real. The caller had identified herself with a badge ID, and also appeared to have pretty detailed knowledge of Gutman's banking info.
He recalled in a post warning others on social media, "They seemed to know so much about me, about my bank account." "And then they said, 'Listen, we suspect that there is significant fraud activity at the bank branch where you bank, and what we need you to do right now--"
He went on to say they "went through" all of the accounts. They apparently found that there was "some suspicious activity recently in my daughter's account."
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It Was A Scam
But it was what the supposed bank employee said next that set off alarm bells in the CBS reporter's head. Things started to sound more and more like a scam as it went on...
"She gave me the names," he recalled, "and then she said, 'What we need you to do, in order to intercept these fraudsters, is to go into the bank and withdraw everything from your bank account.'"
He said that he'd already withdrew a lot into other accounts. The woman continued, "'and take it with you so you have it in cash and that'll trigger the fraudsters into action."
He begrudgingly agreed to do it - but the woman ended up asking him to "not tell anybody at the bank that this is happening because they might be in on it."
He finished the social media warning with a plea to "be so careful". "Some of these scams are incredibly sophisticated with people who clearly know what they are talking about, and speak like they are in the profession... I can't get over this."
