Millennials Got Scammed Outta Thousands (Avoid THESE Red Flags)

Someone just stole $20,000 out of my savings accounts. I got scammed out of $9,000 today and I don't know if I'm gonna get back and I really need that money. On Friday, I gave my credit card information to a scammer. Random $10 were coming out of my checking account. Modern scams look like ordinary bank activities. So let's start with this first scam that looked completely legitimate because it looked like the call was coming directly from Wells Fargo. I got scammed out of $9,000 today and I don't know if I'm gonna get back and I really need that money. This is what happened. So I got a call from Wells Fargo this afternoon. It said Wells Fargo on the caller ID. I Googled the phone number and it was the same phone number as the Wells Fargo fraud department. They said that someone was trying to transfer money out of my Apple Pay from my Wells Fargo account and that they stopped the charge and I needed to put money into my Apple Pay and put it on a new Wells Fargo card so I could reverse the transaction. I feel really stupid saying this now because obviously why would I move money into my Apple Pay to fix this charge? I don't know. On the call, they had me move money to my Apple Pay, add a new Wells Fargo debit card that was supposed to be mine and then transfer the money onto that debit card so that I could stop this transaction and they ended up getting all of the money. I realized after I had sent it that I was getting scammed. I called Wells Fargo immediately and then I called Apple Cash, whatever bank deals with Apple Cash, and they said they couldn't stop the charge because the funds had already posted. So I don't know if I'm gonna get my money back from Wells Fargo. Fingers crossed they come through with this claim in 10 days and are able to help, but I think because I authorized the charge, I don't know if they're gonna be able to reverse it. I don't know what to do. The weirdest thing about her situation is the caller ID said Wells Fargo. So of course she's gonna think, okay, yes, this is my bank calling me, but here's the red flag that you have to look out for. A bank would never tell you to move money out of their bank, out of their banking system in order to protect you from fraudulent activity. They would just freeze your account. They would hold that activity. They wouldn't tell you to transfer it to an Apple Cash or some sort of external wallet. So when a scammer is calling you about this, they may call it a reversal account or a safe account. They might try to trick you into moving it into some sort of cryptocurrency digital wallet like Apple Cash or Zelle or even on gift cards. But the fact is she initiated the transfer, so this can be very hard to get that money back. So what you can do to ensure a level of protection is to hang up, even if you think it's legitimate, hang up on an inbound caller and say, you know what? I'm gonna call you right back from the number that's on the back of your card or inside of the official banking apps that you use. When you call that number that's on the back of your card, you have guarantees that you are going directly to the source and there's less likelihood of a scam actually happening or a scam in the making. I think the big takeaway here is call ID, the sense of urgency, and just the scammer knowing her bank, that's not proof of full legitimacy that this is actually the bank. Now, she did say in another video later on that she did get a little bit of her funds back, but she didn't disclose exactly how much. And then I saw this comment, and somebody posted, wait, OMG, so that means you got your money back? And she said, not all of it, but I got 3K back. So she got scammed out of $9,000. She got $3,000 of that back. So she's still out 6K. That's insane. And then I saw another follower had commented on another video that says, when they tried to scam me, they called me from that Wells Fargo number several times, but they never left a voicemail, which I thought was odd. I can't believe months later, Wells Fargo has not at least tried to warn customers. Seriously, if you haven't seen my video about the three worst banks of America, spoiler alert, Wells Fargo is on that list. You need to watch that Netflix series called Dirty Money, and they do a whole episode on Wells Fargo's predatory activities with their customers. This is just a bank you do not want to do business with. So 9K out of Wells Fargo is pretty scary, but this next story is even scarier because nobody called them, nobody asked for a code, and still nearly $20,000 disappeared. Someone just stole $20,000 out of my savings accounts. Yeah, if you think that's insane, so do I. Basically, my husband and I have a joint checking and savings account with SoFi because they have the best high-yield savings rate that we could find. And we're supposed to go out of town and go camping and we'll be out of service. So I'm going through my email yesterday making sure I'm caught up on everything. And I see an email from SoFi telling me that my husband, Jace, has transferred $19,900 from our savings account and that it's been approved and it's going to be happening in the next three to five business days. And I thought, that's really weird. My husband wouldn't transfer that much money without telling me, surely. So I'm like just racking my brain trying to figure out what's going on. And then I remember like, oh, we just talked about our retirement account and how our high-yield savings caps out at a certain amount. So like, oh, maybe it would be better to move some of our high-yield savings into our retirement accounts, no big deal. So I text Jace, cause I'm like, oh, did you just move money to our retirement account and not tell me? And I call him and he doesn't answer, which is not normal for him. He always answers me. And if he doesn't, he texts me and says, hey, like I'll call you, I'm doing whatever. So I call him, no answer. And then I text him, I'm like, hey, $19,000 and like almost 20K is out of our savings. Did you do that? Still no answer. I call him again, no answer. And at this point, I'm like starting to panic. Cause I'm like, this is so weird. Like what's going on? And he finally texts me back. He was like, so sorry, I'm in a meeting. I'll call you soon. I didn't do that, but I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it. I'm like, are you kidding me? First of all, I married the most nonchalant man in the world. Nothing fazes him. He's like, oh, I'm sure we'll figure it out. No worries. I'm panicking, $20,000. How does someone just steal $20,000? Okay. So I'm calling SoFi. I'm texting their stupid little chat bot in their app and trying to get to talk to like a real person cause it's just AI that I'm talking to. And finally get to talk to someone and they're like, oh yeah, like you're just gonna have to dispute the charge, but we can't get your money back until we're done with an investigation. I'm sorry, $20,000. You're not gonna give us $20,000 back. Okay. So they have 10 days to investigate our dispute of our transaction. According to their records, my husband is the one who transferred the money. Even though we have two factor authentication or whatever that is on. So like anytime anyone signs in, we get a text message. Jace gets a text message to his phone. We had no one sign into our account. That's not normal. The only activity that's been weird is right before that 20K got transferred out, we had like four or five transactions from Ally Bank. There were like 80 cents in, 80 cents out. And there was like $5 in, $5 out. And then to US Bank was the transfer for $19,998. And so basically we're just at SoFi's mercy of whether or not they decide. Since we did catch it within 48 hours, we caught it within 24. But I think if you catch it within 48 hours, you're federally protected under certain laws. We're trying to look into that more. But we're basically at SoFi's mercy. Like if they realize like it actually wasn't us or not who transferred this out. And so, yeah, we have to wait. They have 10 business days to get back to us. We are going to be camping out of service. So every day we're going to have to drive back out of our campsite probably about an hour to service to find out if they decide to give us our money back. And if not, 20K down the drain, $20,000. So this is a reminder. Make sure you have two-factor authentication on. Make sure that you're changing your bank passwords, updating them semi-frequently. And make sure that you're watching your bank account because if you don't catch it within 48 hours, you're not like federally protected as much. And you're kind of at your bank's mercy. Even if you do catch it fast, we're still kind of at SoFi's mercy. So let me know if this happened to anyone else. I'll be making a part two to update you and tell you when they get back to us. But yeah, watch your savings accounts because apparently your money's not safe even in a bank. All right, girl, girl, I would not be going on a camping trip to a remote location where you do not have service while $20,000 is just missing. Okay, $20,000 is a lot of money. And you wanna be sure that you are available when SoFi actually calls you to give you the next steps. That, you wouldn't have fun on that camping trip. You'd be filled with anxiety about where did this 20K go? Am I ever going to get this money back? The red flag to look out for here is the tiny deposits made into their account. The 80 cents in, 80 cents out, $5 in, $5 out. Now, unlike the first woman with the Wells Fargo scam, neither one of these account holders actually initiated the transfer. The transfer was made by some random scammer who got into their account, linked their account to an external bank, and then transferred the funds out. So if there are any unfamiliar banks, this is a good idea to check what external bank accounts are actually linked to your account and that you authorize them, you verify that they are indeed your own accounts. Another good piece of advice that she has here is make sure that you are updating your passwords frequently. You're not reusing passwords. I know that's so insane to be saying in 2026 and be like, I just need to remember all these things you don't. I mean, there are actual strong password creators already baked into things like Chrome and Safari so that you don't have to worry about those things. I was really curious to see if Eliza and her husband actually got their money back. So here's the update. Everybody, I have some good news and some bad news. Good news is that I got my $20,000 back. SoFi has returned it to us into our account and we're very happy about that. The bad news is that I am still here. So for the people wishing I wasn't so that you could have a Netflix documentary, you're just gonna have to find another way to entertain you for two hours, I guess. But in all seriousness, I wanted to tell you exactly what SoFi has told us on how our money was stolen. And then I wanted to share just what I would do if this happened to me again, because I had no idea. And so hopefully that can help somebody. I think the last time I updated you was when SoFi alerted us there had been more suspicious activity on our account and it was officially frozen. I don't know why they didn't freeze our account when we first disputed the ACH transfer of $19,998, but I guess that wasn't enough. So when we got that notification, we were able to call them and we talked to a couple of different people. They got us over to their security team and he was able to open up our case file and see what had been going on. And he realized there are a couple more questions that they had to ask us before they could officially close our case and give us their decision. So he asked us if either of us had been to Delaware recently. We said neither of us had ever been to Delaware. And so we said, no, obviously. And then he asked if either of us had authorized Ally Bank or U.S. Bank to link to our account. And neither of us had authorized any external accounts to link to ours. To clarify, I did say U.S. Bank in one of my videos by mistake. It's been U.S. Bank the whole time. So it was an external account from U.S. Bank that linked to ours without authorization. Somehow someone got into our account and linked an external bank account and transferred themselves money through ACH. It wasn't a scheduled transfer. It was just as soon as possible. And that's when I got the email. And as soon as I got the email, I checked our account, the money was already gone. And so that's how we got in this mess in the first place. The people we're talking to, once we gave them those two pieces of information that neither of us had authorized that and that neither of us had ever been to Delaware, which is the IP address of where the person was coming from who initiated that transfer, they told us, okay, we're gonna send this over to the person in charge of your case. And then they will likely get back to you with an email saying that they approve your dispute and they will credit your money back to your account. Since our account was compromised, that's the only word they would use is our account was compromised. They opened new accounts for us. So we have a new joint checking and a new joint savings account. And then that's where they sent the money back to. So clearly in order to do an ACH transfer like that, you have to have your routing and account numbers. Who knows how they got compromised. SoFi wasn't forthcoming in how this all happened or like what steps they're taking in order to ensure like their safety and their protection. And honestly, that's a little disturbing. Like I would wanna know, what are you doing to make sure that this doesn't happen again? But here's the thing, they had two-factor authentication on. It's a layer of protection, but it doesn't completely stop fraud in its tracks. If these breakdowns are useful for you, hit like and subscribe. I'm not just reacting to the disaster, I'm giving you what the actual trap is revealing that, and then giving you the next step to build better budget behavior. Now, this next victim saw a warning sign, but still trusted the caller because he had part of his card number. On Friday, I gave my credit card information to a scammer. I'm sharing this story partly for awareness and partly because I genuinely cannot believe I fell for it. I feel so stupid. To set the scene, it's a Friday in New York, I wake up, I have an hour-long photo shoot, it's 90, 95 degrees. I get back to my apartment, I lay down, I'm dying of heat exhaustion, I'm dripping in sweat, and I get a phone call. I always answer every random phone call I get because I've applied for so many reality TV shows. I don't know if it's a casting director. I'm in sales, it could be a customer. What if it's a doctor? What if it's someone from home? So be it. I answer the call. He goes, hey Grant, this is USAA, one of my banks. We're just calling because someone tried to switch your address on file and we just want to let you know that they failed the security questions that we asked them. So if you could please just confirm your credit card number with us, we'll get you a new one sent out, no big deal. We're going back and forth, like we're chitting, we're chatting. I'm rifling off my number. I'm like, oh yeah, it's this, it's that, like here's the security code. Thank you so much for sending me a new one and calling me, like I really appreciate you guys being on top of it. What? Why would I give someone my credit card number? That is like scam 101. 30 minutes goes by, that thing's on someone's DoorDash account, he's ordering dominoes, they add it to Lyft, like Google Wallet, this, this, this, and this, and this. I genuinely freak out. I immediately call USAA and I'm like, my credit card's been stolen. I accidentally gave them my number of the phone. I'm so stupid. Can you please send me a new one? Also to let you guys know, like he, the scammer on the phone was like, hey, the first six digits of your card are this, correct? Can you just give me the rest? I don't know why I thought it was legit. I even looked up the phone number on the call and it was like, this is probably a scam. Oh no. But I was so exhausted from the heat and just delusional that I was just listing it out and just didn't think anything of it. He bought dominoes in Fort Lauderdale because it showed the store number. So I call up the dominoes in Fort Lauderdale and go, hey, did someone place an order? And they like couldn't confirm or deny it. And I know that it was in Fort Lauderdale because they used it at a wing stop the next day after I canceled it. And it was like the same store number on the credit card statement. So I need to go down to Fort Lauderdale and figure out who stole my credit card information. But how dumb am I? Like, why would I do that? Who knows? So if you feel bad about yourself, just know and also know that your bank should never be calling you and just asking for your credit card information. Have a great rest of your week and don't fall for any scams. The red flag that everybody needs to pay attention to is when you receive an inbound call and they give you a piece of the true information, do not give them the rest of the pieces. You have to call back your bank. If this was truly, hey, somebody is trying to change my address, whoa, how did they do that? Let me give you a call back just to make sure I've got all my checks and balances in place. That is the red flag to watch out for. Now, Grant did say he had a full day out in the heat and the sun, so he was very vulnerable. And the scammer kind of, I think, just knew that and had a sense of that and was like, jackpot, I've got this guy. Partial information is not proof. Scammers will know bits and pieces of your banking information, your address, your name, but if they don't have the full pieces, that's what they're gonna try to pull out of you to get the rest of the information so that they can apparently go by Domino's and Wingstop. The level of protection that you can put in place for yourself is never read the full card number, the CVV, the three-digit code, to an inbound caller. If you have a bank calling you first, you need to scrutinize that very, very carefully. And worst case scenario, and they are truly who they say they are, just say, hey, I'm just seeing a lot of scams out here happening in the real world. Let me give you a call back. Then you go into the banking app, just like we talked about earlier, and you call the official number that's inside the app or on the back of your card. The thing that you need to be mindful about is not every scam starts with thousands of dollars disappearing. Sometimes it's little incremental cash withdrawals that go unnoticed and disappear without you even blinking an eye, which is what happened to this next victim. This is a PSA for you guys to check your checking accounts. I check pretty often, and I have noticed these charges on my checking that say my name, my full name, and this is payment, and then it has a number of whatever the payment was for, and then my full name again twice underneath it. And I thought it was for something else, and then I just went on to check my checking account again today, and I'm like, wait, what is this? Like, I thought it was a transfer, and it wasn't. So anyways, I called my bank, and it was going back to March where random $10 were coming out of my checking account at random times, no rhyme or reason. So pretty sure I'm being scammed, and it's fraud. So that's awesome. So, and I know that that's, it makes sense because it's a small payment so that you might not notice, and they get away with it. So I just put a claim in for the fraud, stopped payment on it, but check your checking accounts because even somebody as vigilant as me that checks it often, it went by because it was a smaller payment that I thought it was for something else, especially since it had my name on it. I thought it was being transferred to one of my other bank accounts. It was not. This one is so scary because the transfer was under her name and if you're anything like me and you have multiple bank accounts and you're connecting external accounts and then transferring money in between accounts, your name does pull up as a line item like Justine transferred $250 or $10. And so that $10 is so easy to miss, especially if you're just doing a quick glance at your account balance and not actually going into the detailed transactions. So the red flag here is small, vague, repeated charges that are under your name, but you can't actually place what that transaction was for. Your level of protection is exactly what she said. You need to go in at minimum once a week and check those transactions. You need to know exactly where that money was going and if it was actually being initiated by you or a joint account holder. Unfortunately, fraud can look very familiar. It can look very boring. Transactions just get missed. And so I think this is where the modern frauds and the modern scammers of the world are trying to trick you into thinking, oh, you did that, but you're moving so fast with money and you're spending money and you're not really building awareness and I'm just gonna go ahead and scam you out of what will add up to be hundreds and hundreds of $. And I think the best defense starts with knowing what is normal activity going on inside of your bank account and what is not. I've actually built a free budget toolkit that you can access by heading to debtfreemillennials.com slash toolkit or the link in the description box below. You can track your income, expenses, see exactly what money is going in and going out, plus all of your debt payments in one spreadsheet. Now, a budget cannot prevent every scam out there, but it can help you track normal activity and see where abnormal activity is at so you can catch it right off the bat. I think it can be really hard to spot suspicious activities when you don't know what your bills are, what subscriptions are going out, when things are due, unless you have a written budget in place. So definitely check that out using the link below. So we've seen how these scams actually play out, but I wanted to hear from a real bank dispute specialist on what they would and would not do and what advice is actually worth following. Hi, I work in the disputes department at a bank, and so I am here with a list of things that I will never, ever do as a disputes person. Okay, number one, I will never use Zelle. I have never used it, I will never use it. There is no protection in place and it's way too easy to make a mistake. There's protection for scams in very specific circumstances but I just, I don't feel comfortable using it. Number two, I will never send money to someone I don't know. I know that that sounds like a no brainer, but you would be shocked mostly by the amount of disputes that we get where somebody was like trying to buy something on like Facebook Marketplace or whatever and so they use Zelle, Venmo, Cash App, one of those P2P services to send money to buy the item and then it turns out that they were scammed. I don't think a lot of people realize that scams are not protected, like scams aren't covered. If you get scammed, you're kind of SOL. And I don't think a lot of people realize that and I think if more people realized it, they would be more careful with their money. You should be careful with your money anyway. But yeah, don't send money to people that you don't know, especially for an item that you cannot verify the existence of yet. Number three, I will never use Airbnb. We get a lot of disputes for Airbnb, people saying that they were charged fees that they weren't aware of, people saying that they canceled and then were charged anyway, people saying that the accommodations didn't match the description on Airbnb, stuff like that. So yeah, I will never, ever use Airbnb. And also, you're gonna charge me a cleaning fee and I still have to clean? Absolutely the... Not, I'm on vacation. I ain't cleaning... Number four, I will never have a joint account with anyone, including a spouse. We get a lot of disputes from people saying, oh, my spouse and I are going through a divorce, they're not supposed to be accessing this account, but they're joint, so they have access, same as you. And it's a pain in the... Especially if you have recurring charges, like your rent or your mortgage or utilities, whatever, to switch everything over to a new account. So I think a lot of people just don't really think about it. But yeah, it just seems like such a pain to have a joint account. And ladies, stop opening joint accounts with your boyfriends. You don't even have the legal protections of marriage. Number five, I will never be unaware of what is going on with my finances. I cringe so hard when I see people say that their spouse handles the finances and they have no idea what's going on, because why? Why? If someone insists on handling the finances, if your spouse is insisting on handling the finances, I think this is a not-so-hot take, they are fixing to rob you blind, okay? They're fixing to up and leave in a few years and leave you destitute, okay? Be aware of what's going on with your finances, especially, especially if you are a stay-at-home wife, specifically. And number six, I will never buy tickets on StubHub. I don't really think that needs an explanation, but yeah, I ain't doing that. Here's a little reminder, drink some water and then log into your bank account and check your transaction history and make sure everything looks okay. Does anybody get the sense that this woman is subconsciously trauma-dumping on us? She added a lot of her own personal opinions in this clip. I get it, she may have been burned by Airbnb or Zelle, but to never use Zelle is too absolute. A stronger rule here is to treat peer-to-peer apps like cash. So what you wanna do is you wanna verify the recipient before actually paying. I will say, I live in Kansas City, we do a lot of Facebook Marketplace transactions and a lot of things that I personally sell, people will Venmo me, they will Venmo me without actually picking up the item. They'll Venmo me first and then they'll swing by and pick up the item from my porch. No big deal, I'm totally cool with it. You paid me, so here's the item that you haven't actually ever seen in person. And let me know in the comments, is that a localized thing? Does your city also have that kind of behavior around Marketplace purchases? I felt like that happened less often when I lived in California, but it happens very frequently here in Kansas City. I think her strongest tip in this video is that you should never be unaware of what's happening in your finances. I disagree with her on joint bank accounts and just having one person managing the finances is like fixin' to rob you blind. No, there's probably some person in the partnership who is just more actively involved in the budget and they're more willing to actually dive into the numbers because that's one of their strengths. I run all the budget numbers in our household and then it's my husband's job to come sit down and review those numbers with me. So he has the awareness, but I'm the one who's actually facilitating the budget, making the transfers, setting up the actual moving of money a lot of the times. So I don't agree with her tip there of you letting one person run the show. No, it's a partnership. One person does run the show and the other person has to show up and watch the show or participate in the show. You get what I'm saying. And the Airbnb and StubHub claims, that's honestly her personal opinion. You can use those platforms and take advantage of their services without having to deal with any kind of bank disputes. Okay, so we've seen scams big and small. We've heard from a dispute specialist. Now, here is your final bank protection checklist. So this never happens to you. Number one, update passwords often and make them unique. I think this goes without explaining. Number two, enable two-factor authentication. It's just another layer of protection. Number three, review linked external accounts. Do this frequently, add it as part of your banking routine to make sure you know exactly what's connected and what shouldn't be. Number four, check account activity at least weekly. I myself like to check it often. I'm in there every day, if not every other day, just making sure money is moving where it needs to move and doing that correctly. Number five, investigate small, unfamiliar charges. Scrutinize everything. You are your own personal detective and investigator who needs to be advocating for their money. Number six, never share a one-time code with an inbound caller. Many times, banks will actually text you the one-time codes and say explicitly in the text message, we will never call you for this information. Do not give this to anyone. Number seven, never move money because the caller says it's going to protect your account. You never wanna do that. Instead, you hang up and you call your bank, which is number eight. All right, so I wanna know which story scared you the most. Was it the $9,000 stolen from Wells Fargo, $20,000 stolen from SoFi, the stolen USAA card, or the $10 tiny charges disappearing from the checking account? I mean, to me, they're all very, very terrifying. I think the most terrifying one is probably the SoFi one just because it was such a large amount of money that disappeared in one day. But the thing is, you gotta know what is normal so that you can catch what is not. And if you wanna keep going down the financial rabbit hole, then I've queued up this video for you next.