Imposter scams where the scammers pose as a government employee, such as with the IRS or a company with which you do business such as your bank are unfortunately often very successful in stealing your money. They generally convince you that there is an emergency that requires you to pay them money directly or, as is often the case, send money to designated accounts that you are told would be held for you to protect your funds. Last month, Minnesota Vikings linebacker Dallas Turner fell prey to an imposter scam where he received a phone call from a scammer posing as an employee of Chase, his bank informing him that someone had tried to access his bank account and that in order to protect his money he needed to wire it to two different accounts at two different Chase banks, which Turner did before he realized after speaking with a family member that he had been scammed.
Scammer are able to use a technique called spoofing to manipulate your Caller ID so that their call can be made to appear to come from whatever number and source they wish. In this case, the call appeared to come from Chase although if did not.
Minnesota police have identified several suspects, but charges have not been filed as of yet.
TIPS
The biggest red flag in this type of scam is to remember that no bank or governmental agency will ever under any circumstances direct you to withdraw your funds and put them into another account provided by the scammer.
If you do receive a call, text message or phone call about a threat to your account, you can never be sure that the person contacting you as legitimate, so you should never provide personal information, make a payment or click on a link in any such communication. Rather, if you think the communication may be legitimate, merely call your bank or other company involved at a phone number you know is accurate to find out the truth.
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