Judith Anderson can’t believe the response she ultimately received from her bank after a scammer drained close to $150,000 from her account.
“My son and my daughter, we got on Facetime and they said, ‘You have your money back,’ and I was just overwhelmed,” she said in a quivering voice. Her daughter Tracy Martinez was sitting next to her and held her hand throughout an interview with NBC San Diego.
Her bank credited Anderson’s account with $147,000 she thought was lost forever. Money she had set aside to help pay for her husband’s hospice care.
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“I didn’t realize how stressed I was until it was over,” she said in relief.
In an NBC 7 Responds story that aired on Jan. 18, Anderson described how she ended up wiring $49,000 three different times after she was targeted by an elaborate scam that pretended to be from Wells Fargo’s Fraud Division.
NBC 7 Responds
“You know, I thought I was doing the right thing, and it turned out disastrous,” she said, wanting to get the word out so that others don’t fall for the same trick.
Anderson says the call came in during a time when she’s dealing with a whole lot in her life, including caring for her husband while he’s at a hospice care facility. She shared how she believes the caller was able to convince her to wire the money.
Tactics the scammer used
Spoofed Number
He used a spoofed number from Wells Fargo, so she thought the call was from the bank when she saw the name pop up on her phone.
Fear Tactics
He used fear tactics, scaring her into thinking someone out of Texas had compromised her account.
Sense of Urgency
He then used that fear to create a sense of urgency by telling her she needed to quickly follow his instructions to protect her money. Otherwise, it would be gone if she waited any longer.
Calls Forwarded
The caller also fooled her into forwarding her calls while they kept her on the phone. This way, no one could contact her while they kept her on the line.
Recipients Added
The caller set up recipient accounts that he gave the name of “Judith Anderson” as a nickname to make her believe she was wiring money to herself.
Anderson says that after about 50 minutes of constant changes to her account, it eventually became too much for her. She hung up and called her daughter right away.
“I was so grateful for Tracy to go to bat for me and not say, ‘Oh mother, you’re so stupid,’” she said as she turned and smiled at her daughter.
What Tracy Martinez did was make noise, lots of it.
She says she received millions of comments on social media where she raised the alarm about the scam and wondered if Wells Fargo could’ve done more to protect her mom’s money.
“Any email I could find for Wells Fargo, I emailed them, wrote our story and our timeline of everything,” Martinez said.
She also reached out to NBC 7 Responds after the bank rejected one of her claims to get the money back.
NBC 7 Responds pressed Wells Fargo for answers. We asked about internal guardrails that could’ve stopped what happened to Anderson once so much activity started during the phone call.
Wells Fargo responds
They responded with the following statement:
Scams are an industry-wide concern, and we never want to see anyone become a victim. Through our education efforts, we are actively working to raise awareness of common scams to help prevent these heartbreaking incidents.
About a week after our story aired, Wells Fargo reached out to us with a new statement that read:
We are pleased we were able to resolve this issue for our customer. While we cannot provide details on this case for privacy and confidentiality reasons, we can share that we conducted a thorough review and completed our investigation after receiving additional information.
Martinez recalled getting the news from a Wells Fargo representative. “She said, ‘Wells Fargo has decided to reverse the decision,’ and I just started crying with her on the phone.”
Anderson says the money will help her continue to be by her husband’s side at the hospice care home.
"I was so thankful for all the prayers and all the well-wishes, for you putting it out there, and hopefully protecting someone else from going through this,” she said.
Wells Fargo didn’t tell NBC 7 Responds what led them to cover Anderson’s losses. However, they did emphasize that if you provide a scammer access to your account and account information, including one-time passcodes and passwords, you may not recover your funds.
They have more information on their website’s Fraud Department page that frankly all of their customers should take time to read.
