Scammers Drain $20,000 Life Savings From Wells Fargo Customer After Posing as Bank and Federal Agents: Report
A scammer posing as an FBI official has successfully taken a Wells Fargo customer’s entire life savings.
Diane Fendley of Houston received what she believed was an urgent fraud alert text purportedly from Wells Fargo’s fraud department asking if she had unauthorized charges at a major retailer, reports the local news station KHOU. [adinserter block="1"]
When she denied the charges, Fendley was told that her local Wells Fargo branch was under investigation for ongoing fraud and to “protect her funds” she needed to withdraw everything.
Shortly after the text exchange, Fendley received a phone call from someone claiming to be with the FBI.
The caller reinforced the narrative that her bank accounts were at risk and sent her a document on official FBI letterhead to lend credibility to the scheme. At the caller’s direction, Fendley withdrew $20,000, representing her life savings, from Wells Fargo.
Rather than depositing the funds with the bank or moving them into a secure account, she was instructed to cross the street to a Chase Bank branch and use its drive-through service to deposit the cash into a newly opened Chase account.
The scammer provided a PIN and linked her digital wallet so the deposit could be executed quickly. Within moments, her entire savings had disappeared into the fraudsters’ control.
Incidents like Fendley’s are part of a broader rise of impersonation scams in the US, where fraudsters leverage social engineering to extract sensitive information and ultimately transfer funds out of victims’ accounts.
Banks are generally not required to reimburse customers for losses from impersonation scams when the customer authorizes the transaction, as these are considered authorized payments under laws like the Electronic Fund Transfer Act
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