A TEXAS man had unexpectedly passed away just hours after he saw $6,800 permanently vanish from his Wells Fargo account.
It all started when the father of three, scammed out of thousands of dollars, received a call from who he thought was the bank.
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Paul Schendel, a 52-year-old from Houston, was the victim of a sophisticated scam that drained his life savings, as reported by a local Fox outlet.
The scam began when the father received a call from a fraudster claiming to be a Wells Fargo employee, who used a tactic called Caller ID spoofing to make the call seem legit.
The caller, already knowledgeable about certain information and transactions on Schendel’s account, warned the man about fraudulent activity.
Later on, a woman claiming to work for Wells Fargo security showed up at Paul’s front door, asking for his debit card.
He did as he was asked and watched her cut it into pieces and put them in an envelope, which she took with her.
When Paul visited a Wells Fargo branch the following day to ask for a new debit card, the Texas man was informed that he had been scammed.
The bank told Paul that it does not call customers randomly and that he was unlikely to be reimbursed, meaning that his life savings were gone for good.
The 53-year-old died of a heart attack the next day.
Paul had been disabled due to a back injury and had struggled with serious health problems for years, including complications from diabetes, his sister Karen Schendel told the local outlet.
However, she was confident that Paul’s deadly heart attack was brought on by the abrupt loss of his life savings and the hopelessness it came with.
“I have no doubt it contributed,” she told the outlet.
A SLEW OF SCAMS
Paul was one of several victims that recently experienced the Wells Fargo scam, with fraudsters pretending to be bank employees and visiting people at their houses.
Scott Merovitch, a Wells Fargo customer of 37 years, was similarly targeted back in May.
He was fully convinced that the scammers were legitimate because they were aware of charges and purchases he had made over the last 10 days.
Expert Advice: How to protect yourself from fraud
Craig Costigan, the CEO of fraud experts NICE Actimize gave the following tips to readers of The U.S. Sun on how to stay safe from fraudsters.
- As the saying goes, trust but verify. Always question your text and email communications. It may not be from who you think it is. Look for giveaways that it is a scam email. If your bank contacts you about a fraud via a text or email, call the number on the back of your credit or debit card to contact the fraud department directly – much safer than giving data to an impersonator.
- Protect your personal identifying information such as social security cards, your blank checks and other IDs.
- Always be vigilant. Even the safest and most careful among us have encountered fraudsters – we survived
because we reported the activity immediately to our providers, changed our passwords and checked our credit reports for unusual activity. - If you are not applying for credit, you might also consider placing a freeze on your credit reports, such as Experian, TransUnion and Equifax, so fraudsters can’t open accounts in your name. You can easily unfreeze your credit when you want to open a new account.
Within an hour and a half of handing over his debit card to the woman claiming to be Wells Fargo security, Merovitch saw $20,000 drained from his account via ATMs at several grocery stores a few miles from his home.
These kinds of scams are becoming all too common across the US, often feeling terrifyingly real.
Bank impersonation scams have risen twenty-fold from 2019 to 2022, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC.
Fraudsters use a variety of tactics to gain victims’ trust, including spoofing phone numbers and providing private account details.
Common signs of a financial scam involve a person pretending to be from a trustworthy institution such as your bank and insisting that there is an issue and that you must act quickly, per the FDIC.
Not only do fraud victims lose large sums of cash, but they also can face physical symptoms as a result.
Financial stress has been linked to a number of health issues, including high blood pressure, anxiety, depression, and even cardiac events in extreme situations.
Others have been victims of sophisticated scams, losing huge amounts of cash to fraudsters.
One woman’s 80-year-old mother-in-law, for example, drained nearly $1 million within a week.
Another victim was out $51,000 and in tears after paying for home repairs – she only realized the problem during a bank visit.
