LAKE COUNTY, Fla. – A Clermont woman said she was set up by a bogus message from Amazon that led to a four-hour conversation with men claiming to be with the U.S Treasury Department.
The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said the Amazon message claimed her account was locked because there had been an unusual amount of spending.
She called a number that she thought was for Amazon customer service and was told her name had been linked to drugs and money laundering.
“I never thought in a million years I would dial an Amazon number and it would be fake,” she said. “They scared me to death. I was shaking, I was sweating.”
The woman told News 6 she hit a link on the Amazon text message and then googled a number for Amazon after becoming suspicious.
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“Before I knew it, I gave up my social security number, and they wanted me to send a picture of my driver’s license,” she recalled.
Investigators believe the link allowed the thieves to hack her phone and place the fake phone number on what appeared to be a Google search engine.
U.S. Secret Service agents in Orlando said they have been receiving reports of police and government imposters every week.
“These people actually believe that they are talking to federal agents,” Special Agent in Charge Caroline Obrien-Buster told News 6.
Since 2014, the Federal Trade Commission has received nearly 1.3 million reports linked to impersonation or imposter scams, with $2.6 billion dollars in reported losses.
In this case, the imposters wanted the woman to transfer $125,000 to a new bank routing number.
She called the Clermont police, and the responding officer assured her that she was not under investigation for any sort of money laundering or drug trafficking.
Obrien-Buster said intimidation and your money are the basic weapons in the imposter schemes.
“It’s always the same story but a different agency,” she said. “What they’re saying is you have to transfer your money to a safe account.”
Victims are told the money transfer is supposed to protect them because their identity has been compromised.
Of course, the Secret Service said it is all part of the lie.
“Never, never, never will a federal agent call you and tell you to move money into a Bitcoin account or another bank account,” Obrien-Buster stressed. “Nobody will do that — nobody.”
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