‘What an escalation’: Woman gets a call from ‘Chase Bank.’ Then she asks them to send her a notification in the app
A woman on TikTok recently recounted a scam phone call she received from someone claiming to be from Chase Bank.
Luckily, Becca (@beccabren) had her wits about her and was able to call out the imposter in real-time.
“I just had the wildest spam call from Chase,” the woman says.
Becca says she received a phone call from someone claiming to be from Chase Bank. They asked if she had recently made any Zelle transactions, as there seemed to be fraud on her account.
“I don’t think this is real, but I just said no, and they were like, ‘OK, well, we’re gonna go ahead and cancel it from your Zelle,’” she says.
When Becca agreed to this, the person on the phone said she would first need to add a recipient.
“I knew at this point,” she says about it being a scam phone call. She then made a simple request that any real bank representative would have been able to comply with.
“I go, ‘Can you just send me a notification through the Chase app so I know that this is real,’” she says.
The man on the phone allegedly argued that she could verify that it was Chase through the phone number he was calling from. But Becca quickly pointed out that phone numbers can be falsified. She again asked him to send a notification. That’s when the man’s tone shifted.
“He goes, ‘I’m gonna send a hitman to burn your house down,’” Becca says with an incredulous laugh.
“Sir, I live in an apartment; I don’t even have a house,” she jokes.
How can people identify a bank scam?
Scams abound all around us, so it’s important to be up-to-date on the latest grifts in order to avoid falling for them. Thankfully, social media is full of stories warning people about the many ways people can try to trick you into giving them money.
While things could have gone horribly wrong for Becca, her quick thinking prevented what could have been a huge financial mistake. But banks do occasionally phone their customers, so here are some steps you can take to verify that it is an official representative from the bank and not a scam call.
Scammers can easily falsify phone numbers, which can make the call appear to come from your bank. If your bank calls you on the phone, always hang up and call the bank back using a trusted phone number from its website. Customers should also ask the person for their name and the department they are calling from.
Never, under any circumstances, provide personal information over the phone unless you have initiated the call to the bank. Callers who ask for sensitive information should immediately be treated with suspicion. The best thing to do when this happens is to hang up and report it to your bank.
@beccabren
Viewers are mostly amused
Becca’s video received over 57,000 views. People in the comments section joked about the caller’s outsized reaction, and many shared scammer stories of their own.
“I mean, that sounds like Chase customer service though,” one person joked.
“What an escalation,” another remarked.
“They always call but say my bank’s name wrong, so I always tell them I made those charges. Real bank wouldn’t then hang up on me,” a third shared.
“My former boss held a scammer for almost an hour on the phone an din the end tried selling the scammer my co-worker’s car,” someone else recounted.
One person did comment with some sound advice.
“This is funny but in all seriousness pls report it to ur Bank and/or the FBI,” they wrote.
The Daily Dot reached out to Becca via Instagram direct message and to JPMorgan Chase & Co via email.
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The post ‘What an escalation’: Woman gets a call from ‘Chase Bank.’ Then she asks them to send her a notification in the app appeared first on The Daily Dot.