Double-Whammy Scammy

Our state-sponsored health system, like plenty of services, has scammers who send fake emails coming from it to get people to give their personal information. One of the more frequent ones, which also makes it among those for which warnings are given by all channels available, are emails claiming that the personal card associated with it needs to be renewed.

While checking her email on her phone while in a park, my mother brain-farts her way into falling for the scam instead of deleting the email as she usually does. About ten minutes after she provides the scam with her credit card information, she gets a call.

Caller: “Hello, I’m from [Bank]. Are you in [City on the other side of the country]?”

Mother: “No.”

Caller: “Your card got charged there for [list of at least three different transactions].”

This is about the point at which my mother clicks that she has fallen for a scam.

Mother: “You don’t sound like the person who usually calls from [Bank].”

Caller: “I’m from the fraud department. Now, I’m going to walk you through using the [Bank] app to block your credit card.”

Mother: “I just gave a scammer my credit card information. I’m out of the house right now and I’d rather go home to block the card from the [Bank] website.”

After this, the caller kept insisting that she let them walk her through using the app to block her card immediately. She eventually gave them a firm “no,” hung up, and returned home to get things taken care of via her usual bank contact information. The insistence that she immediately use the app aside, several small details noticed in hindsight strongly hinted toward the caller being part of the scam but not ready to deal with someone newly on guard about sharing personal information.