A woman from Oakland, California, was reportedly scammed out of tens of thousands of dollars by a fraudster allegedly posing as an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), claiming her Apple ID was stolen.
According to a new report by ABC7 News, a man in Washington has been arrested and accused of impersonating an FBI agent and stealing thousands of dollars from the elderly.
Authorities say the scammer’s latest victim was Judith Rosenberg, who received a text one morning claiming that someone had stolen her Apple ID and that she needed to call a number to resolve the issue.
When she called, she was met with a man who was posing as an agent of the FBI, sending her images of a fake badge and telling her that criminals had taken out nine different accounts using her name and social security number. The man then urged her to move her funds to a “protected account.”
The bad actor had her withdraw $63,000 from her bank account in the form of a cashier’s check and deposit it at a Citibank in Hayward. But when she was rejected by suspicious bank tellers, the man told her to mail the check to an address in San Lorenzo.
When Rosenberg contacted Bank of America, telling them that she had been scammed, the bank manager refused to stop the check, according to the report.
However, once the media stepped in and contacted the bank, Rosenberg’s funds were fully restored to her account.