Yeah, I agree on the Kit Boga thing, I watch him. This really sucks dude, sorry. That’s a textbook scam.
Given this currently still going on have you all called the local office of FBI? Ugh this seems like a really terrible situation, I don’t know anything about this but feels trying to let the bank officially know he think someone is trying to withdraw his account asap would be important either from them stopping it or maybe being able to be refunded after fact?
Have you all called the local FBI office? Maybe they or state police have some communication with banks to shut things down in this situation?
Also wonder if utility in figuring out fax/address/etc for the 401k and sending overnight letter and fax today alerting them to the fraud?
@commonwealth, what state is this? Do they have some version/variation of Adult Protective Services? (It’s like Child Protecive Services but for cognitively impaired seniors). (We have that in New York). If they do, i would call them first thing as well. This is going to be hard for you to figure out on your own especially if you don’t live there.
The 401k isn’t at a bank/financial institution that has some kind of 24/7 fraud line?
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Really sorry you are dealing with this, CW. I have nothing useful to offer you unfortunately, but feel terrible about the whole thing. This sounds like a textbook scam, down to every last detail, and it’s super effective sadly. Fuck scammers so much. This is a fear I’ve had for my parents for some time, and I will be sure to talk to them again about it asap.
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God this sucks. Makes me so mad.
No, I need to do that in the morning. I still haven’t slept and I am flying out this morning. He reported it to the police, but now that I know his phone was monitored I’m not totally sure it wasn’t a fake cop at his house. The bank sent him to the state police, he and I spoke about it on the phone (scammers likely listened in), he somehow (everything he tells me is hazy) ended up on the phone with the police before arriving and got redirected from state to county over jurisdiction. He called the county police and they said they’d send someone to his home, who beat him there by 10 minutes (so we’re talking a 20-30 min response time). This person gave a badge number but told him not to use it, gave him the main non emergency police number and no direct phone number or business card, and took pictures of a few documents but didn’t take any. Also inspected his phone and computer and removed the remote access software from his computer (supposedly) but didn’t find it on his phone - I got my father to look later and found it.
Obviously someone appearing in person and impersonating a cop is a major escalation in exposure and risk, but “don’t use my badge number” is so fucking suspicious.
Bank account is already emptied out so focused on saving his 401k.
PM sent.
Email only for fraud reporting and customer service phone M-F. I know a request to withdraw has been made from their automated system when I called and entered his info.
I also know the scammers likely listened to calls in which he gave me passwords to log in and help him, so if they spoof my number and AI clone my voice now that they have a recording of it there’s no telling what they can get him to do.
The “fake cop” thing is weird. On the one hand, these operations are almost never sophisticated enough to have a live person in the area who can respond (they are overseas based). On the other hand, I’ve never heard of a local cop who shows up to your house and “removes your malware” so I’ve got nothing on this one. I’d call the police department main number and see if you can get them to confirm they sent someone out there and/or let them know someone claiming to be one of their officers maybe showed up at your father’s house. I think it’s probably likely this was a legit cop because, again, one of these overseas scam operations having someone on call who can respond like that just seem so damned unlikely, but the whole thing is weird.
It was a stressful situation for CW’s dad so maybe he didn’t get all the details right when relaying the information to him.
Yeah, I think it’s way more likely than not that the cop was legit, if only for the reason that these operations do not have people on call in various locations across the US to show up at people’s houses.
Where would they be having the 401k mail/transfer something? Wouldn’t that be inherently traceable/reversible? Or they just getting a cash out to the actual victim and hoping they can get them to deposit into crypto again?
I don’t know, if they can get in and change direct deposit information for 401k they could probably get it to one o their compromised accounts, however yes, eventually, that should be reversible since it’s fraud that is unauthorized by victim (unlike the $30k withdrawal which was). But the scammer wont’ care because they’LL get it to one of their other compromised accounts, and then from there get it somewhere else, and then somewhere else, and by the time it’s “reversed” the only institution out of the money is the bank. It could be a messy and lengthy process to get reversed but in theory @commonWealth your parents shouldn’t be out the 401k money.
He says it was a cop in uniform who arrived in a police cruiser, so I’m now 99% sure it was a real cop.
It’s not just the sophistication to have someone on the ground, it’s also a tremendous amount of additional risk of getting caught for not that much more upside. They go from ~untraceable in a foreign country to having a guy on the ground who at least knows somebody who at least knows some way money is moved or people communicate.
Yeah everything is fuzzy for him. He slept 4-6 hours total from Wednesday morning through Friday at 3am his time and spent over 20 of those hours on the phone with the scammers and the last 10 or so realizing he’d been scammed and reporting stuff and talking to me. He’s fried mentally and still can’t sleep and I haven’t been able to, which isn’t going to be good as we proceed but it is what it is.
Yeah, that’s a real cop.
Does local news still cover these stories or are they too common now? Publicity + GoFundMe could recoup some losses.
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That’s good to know. I believe their 401k can only be withdrawn via check, but that’s info my dad got on the phone so while he is pretty sure he was talking to the 401k people and that he initiated that call, I consider it a coin flip to have been the scammers.
If that’s true they’d have to change his registered address, get a check cut and sent, receive it, fraudulently cash it or deposit it, and then transfer it. I’m pretty confident if that’s in motion I can shut it down immediately on Monday morning, and focus on changing account numbers.
Just found out he had a spreadsheet with passwords in it that they likely could have accessed. He says there are 100 different accounts. All the facepalms. I had an argument with him years ago telling him a spreadsheet with passwords was asinine.
He got really upset when he saw one of the passwords was mine - it was to let him use a streaming service for a day and I changed the password before I gave it to him and changed it back after. Couldn’t tell if he was relieved or felt dumb upon hearing that, maybe both.
Im sure opening up to even more scams but feel like there must be some PR / social media consultants who specialize in running a successful local news / go fund me recovery effort unless that money has really dried up. No idea how sort the actual ones vs millions scams I’m sure
I’m still trying to convince him to tell his sister, his closest relative it just by blood but emotionally and contact wise, they talk every few days. Part for emotional support, part because the scammers probably have all his contacts.
He’s embarrassed and probably doesn’t want it on the news, but I do think that would be a good idea personally.
Shit, he doesn’t want to change his phone number. Says he’s more upset about that then the $30K, and given that $30K is like a quarter of his net worth, I don’t even know how to respond to that.
My guess is it’s possible to be made whole this way but unlikely. You’re either going to get like < $500 from family and friends or $10K+ and not much in between.
I don’t think it would open them up that much worse. Bottom line here is organized criminals have all their account numbers and passwords and contact info, all their friends and family members contact info, and everything he told them during 20 hours of phone calls while panicked and sleep deprived. And they know exactly how much more he has left.
They’re coming back after him relentlessly as is, and if they give up they’ll sell his info to other scammers.
He thinks it’s a one off and I’m trying to beat into his head that it’s going to be a barrage of scam attempts from here on in. They aren’t going to give up trying when they got him to put his entire bank account balance into a Bitcoin ATM, one $100 bill at a time (literally).