By Zainab Susi
When we panic we make mistakes and regret it later.
My family and I were at Harvest Market eating lunch recently when my phone rang. The ID showed that Chase Bank in Urbana was calling me, I picked up the call assuming everything was fine.
The person on the phone confirmed my identity by asking my first and last name. Then she asked, “Did you use your card at Best Buy in Arizona with an amount of $190?” The day before I purchased something at Best Buy but my amount was higher. Her voice and calmness convinced me that she worked for the bank. I didn’t think anything negative, and felt grateful that Chase was keeping an eye out for fraud.
I told her I did use my card the day before in Champaign and the amount was higher.
She told me not to worry about it and that they would send me another card but until then use a different pin. She then stated she would text me my pin and once I received it to let her know. While I was talking to her I received a text with a pin number. I didn’t have glasses so I couldn’t read the whole thing but I gave her the number and then she asked me what my old pin number was. I gave it to her and she said that I didn’t have to do anything else, then we ended the call.
A few hours later I returned home and the very first thing I did was check my bank account to see where my card was used. I didn’t see any BestBuy charges in Arizona but I saw 5 new different charges in Champaign from the last 2 hours.
I notified Chase bank and explained what happened. The earlier call I received wasn’t from the bank but it was a fraud call pretending to be a bank representative. They easily took my information, shopped using my card and withdrew cash from an ATM using ApplePay.
The real bank representative at Chase informed me that they would recover my losses and told me that they would never call or share a pin over text. In hindsight I had already known this, but at the moment I couldn’t think of anything at all.
The situation was alarming and made me feel very vulnerable. I know I am not the first or last person these criminals will attempt to fraud. The reason I chose to share my story, so that you can learn from my mistakes. If you receive a call like this or are in another similar situation, don’t panic. When we panic we make mistakes and regret it later. I’m lucky that my real bank was able to help me recover from this. We can’t change the past, but we can learn from it, and help others along the way.
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Life is beautiful!
