Description

I had sold my car to “Cash for Cars” business. The headquarters for the business is located in Brooklyn, NY. Within a couple of days I started getting random text messages from NY state with people attempting to make contact with me, or phish for information. This also occurred on the app Telegram. At the same time I started receiving emails falsely identifying as legitimate businesses. The return address for the emails was always someone’s personal email. In the emails there was a phishing link to click. The biggest worry was receiving phone calls from someone pretending to be U.S. Bank Branch Fraud Department. This person could not identify any of my information, only that they had my phone number. They proceeded to tell me someone by the name of “Michael Smith” had attempted to zelle themselves from my account in the amounts of $3k, $2k, $1k, and $500. I notified the woman that I do not, and have not ever had a bank account with U.S. Bank. She told me someone stole my information and made an account. She said my information was stolen over wi-fi when I was in Danbury, CT (mind you I haven’t been there). To which I stated “I don’t use wi-fi, and I don’t have a bank account”. Upon questioning how she got my information she said “you have an account with us and I found your number”. She then continued to ask me if I had Zelle, or PayPal (attempting to get that information). I denied to answer. She kept telling me she needed to transfer me to another department, but was unable to. She demanded I stay on the phone. This went on for a total of almost five minutes. She gave me a “claim number” to which she wanted me to read it back to her. After I had, I asked her to read it back. She couldn’t. I hung up at this point. The following day I received four phone calls between 8am-9am CST from the same number. One of the callers didn’t fully hang up and accidentally left a voicemail. In the voicemail it sounded as though they were in a call center, and taking a personal call. They said things about “killing someone” and they demanded someone go and get them pasta, before switching to speaking Spanish. All of the callers from this number had identifiable New York accents. I checked to see what time the bank opens. It opens at 9am. Perhaps it was 9am in NY, but it was only 8am my time in the Midwest. I took it upon myself to call the actual U.S. Bank Fraud Prevention. They assured me I have no account, no one had tried to open one, and that the people I had spoken with were more than likely a scam.