During the recent tax season, Kristen Fillerup enlisted the assistance of a professional to handle her tax preparation. Ultimately, that was her belief. She received word that her payment had not gone through.
“I thought, ‘No, wait a minute. I sent it a week ago on Venmo,’ and it showed that it went, and it was taken out of my account,” Fillerup said.
She realized she had mistakenly transferred $275 to the incorrect company with a similar name. After her money went unreturned, she reached out to Venmo for assistance.
“So, I got online and found the customer service number,” she said.
That’s when the situation took a strange turn. She reported that she dialed the genuine Venmo customer service number, but the call was incredibly distorted. The representative assured her that he would return shortly on a different line. When he received the call, Fillerup had no reason to believe he was dealing with a scammer. She believed he hailed from Venmo.
“In the back of my mind, I’m thinking, ‘I initiated this phone call, so this is legit,'” she said. “He called back, and it was a better line – easier to understand him.”
A representative on the line requested that Fillerup install a specialized application utilized by IT professionals to resolve phone problems from a distance.
“The next thing I know, he’s controlling my phone,” she said.
Unbeknownst to her, the man had accessed her phone to infiltrate her bank account, transferring funds from her savings to her checking account. Upon his return, he informed her that the moment for a test had arrived.
“He said, ‘OK, we’re going to send a dollar to somebody in your contacts,'” she said.
She chose her sister-in-law. It’s important to note that he continues to have control over her phone.
“He’s texting her like it’s me,” she said.
Everything appeared to be fine, until the unexpected call from her sister-in-law changed everything.
“She said, ‘Kristen, he just, he didn’t send me a dollar. He sent me $4,961.’ And the guy is on the phone saying, ‘She just needs to send it back now,'” Fillerup recounted. “She (Kristen’s sister-in-law) said, ‘I think this is a scam. I’m not going to send it back.'”
With the scam now exposed, Fillerup swiftly took action to have her bank close her account. She emerged unscathed financially.
“I’m not out of any money because before they could actually take it out of the debit account, the bank just shut everything down. The money never left my account,” she said.
Venmo is now demanding the return of the $4,961 that she claims never left her bank account.
“Every day or so, I get an email from Venmo/PayPal saying that I that I owe Venmo $4,961,” she said. “And the last one I got a couple days ago said, ‘You pay that and then we will pursue this fraud.”
When she was unable to get Venmo to address the fraud, Fillerup called on me for assistance. The Investigators reached out to Venmo for clarification on the matter.
An email response has been received stating, “We will look into this and get back to you.”
