Almost Scammed

 I nearly got scammed. I received a text from "my bank" suspecting fraud asking if a Zelle transaction was authorized or not. I've gotten similar texts from my bank that actually were from them that would ask if certain transactions were authorized. Over the last few months I've gotten those texts and have had to replace several bank cards, so it wasn't so weird to get this. I was just thinking "here we go again" since I just finished dealing with recent fraud activity and replacing a card. Well, I replied "no" and they immediately called me. They sounded so legit and even spoofed my actual bank's fraud #, so there weren't any red flags right away. I didn't realize right away that it was spoofed, but confirmed it immediately after the call. Anyways, the guy told me that money was being sent to someone (he gave a name that I don't remember) for something like $4500 and that they were trying to recover the money before it's processed. He told me to log into my account and verify recent purchases and verify how much I had in my checking and savings account. These should have stopped me because my bank never told me to read off the latest transactions or asked me how much money was in my accounts. They would read off the transactions themselves and ask me if they were authorized charges or not. So after stupidly telling him that information he told me they needed me to sign up with Zelle (which I never used or knew what it even was, but there's a link on my bank's app). So they were walking me through it to add a recipient (apparently it's an app that let's you send money easily from your bank account to other people). They had me put my name, but in the phone number box they had me put a "code" they texted me instead of my actual phone number (super red flag). I ignorantly put that number and tried to add it. As I tried to do this, the adding recipient process wouldn't complete and I was instructed to try again. Then when I switched back into the app after leaving again I had been logged out. When I tried to log in I got a message that my account was "temporarily unavailable". The guy told me to try logging into a browser, but that wasn't working. He finally told me to go to the bank in the morning to have my account restored. He was saying my account will go negative and it could take 4 to 6 weeks to recover the money and blah blah blah. I asked him if he knew what had actually happened, then he asked if I wanted him to call back in an hour and I said yes and that was that.

So I immediately called the fraud number for my bank that showed up on my login screen (which I then realized was the same exact number that appeared to call me). I told them I think I was being scammed and explained what happened. I was like "my account locked, and that's probably a good thing". She told me that the bank had locked me out because of suspected fraud activity. Well, fortunately they locked me out because I was going right along with every instruction. Looking back there were so many red flags that I should have stopped myself. But the thing is when stuff like that happens you get into a panic zone and it's easy to ignore the signs. They're telling me my account is gonna go negative, so that's certainly gonna panic a nigga. I wonder how far I would have gone with it. I looked it up and confirmed that it definitely was a scam. Apparently they were gonna have me send money to them at some point through Zelle. I don't know if I would actually do it since I was in that panic zone, but what would they have me do? I don't have that kinda money in my account right now, so were they gonna have me send part of it? I would still be negative, so there wouldn't be a point in sending any money at all. I'm sure I wouldn't be able to send more than what's in my account currently. They should have just given up when I told them how little I had in my account. Idiots. If I was a scammer I would just give up as soon as I find out they don't have much money and say "never mind, the problem's fixed all of a sudden somehow....broke nigga!". Wasting both our time at that point.

Well the guy never called back, so hopefully I won't have to deal with that again. Just gotta sharpen up and always be on guard.