Reply to My 18 year old was scammed out of 3K on her first day as intern

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[quote=Anonymous]Hi OP, I went thru something similar with my then 16 year old daughter a few months ago, and even though I caught her before the scammer got access to any money, I was still upset with her for not recognizing that the interaction was suspicious.

I came home from work one evening and she was in my bedroom talking to some guy on speaker phone while also trying to login to her bank account on her laptop. Normally I would not have even asked her what was going on, but because it was close to 7pm and the man's voice wasn't familiar to me, I asked her what was going on.

She said she got an email stating that her "free trial" for some tech company had ended and because she had not cancelled, they charged $700 to her card to renew her subscription. She has done "free trials" before and got charged bcuz she forgot to cancel them in time, so I she thought she had done it again.

She was in a panic and wasn't thinking clearly and just wanted to fix the problem quickly and without us finding out, so she called the number on the email. The guy she spoke to was very nice and said he'd refund her money as a "one time courtesy" but in order for him to do it, he had to send her an email link while they were on the phone. He sent her the link and after she opened it, he instructed her to login to her Bank of America account so he could refund her the $700.

I came in when she was trying to login to her bank account...she had forgotten her online banking password and the guy was trying to help her reset it. When I heard the conversation, I was like...who are you talking to?

So she explained what was going on and I was like huh?? So the guy (who was on speaker) jumped in and started talking to me and explained that she had been charged a renewal fee bcuz she had forgotten to cancel a subscription and he was trying to refund her the money. So I was like, why do you need her to login to her bank account to issue the refund? I get refunds all the time and nobody has ever needed my banking info to process one. So he said that was how they normally processed refunds for their tech services and she needed to hurry up and reset the password so he could put the money back in her account. He said he was about to leave for the day and there was no guarantee that the person taking over for him would be willing to do the refund. I was already super suspicious of the encounter, but when he said that, I muted the phone and told my daughter to log off of her computer immediately.

It was so weird because I didn't initially realize he had accessed her computer, I did notice the cursor move when she was on her phone, but I thought it was random. But once she started to log off I noticed the cursor moving with purpose...like someone was moving it remotely...which was exactly the case. The guy started yelling...what are you doing? why did you end our chat session? I thought you were resetting the password...if you log off you won't get your money back! I asked why he needed to take control of my daughter's laptop and again he said he had to do it to process the refund.

I told him to calm down and to give me his phone number so I could call him and we could do the refund from my computer instead...and he agreed. When I called him back he answered immediately (as if it were a personal call) and asked me to login to my daughter's account from my laptop. I asked him to first provide me with a receipt showing she was charged $700,  but he refused. He said the people who could produce a receipt for the purchase had already gone home for the day...but it was only 630ish in the evening in DC, which meant it was 3:30 in the afternoon in CA...so someone should have been available to create a receipt bcuz the call took place during normal business hours. When I asked him to speak to a supervisor, he hung up on me, and when I tried to call him back, he didn't answer.

I called the bank right away and alerted them to what had happened. I also sent them the original email, the email link the guy sent and his phone number. I had my daughter's computer checked and swept the next day.

I also told my daughter that she needs to remain calm when unexpected non-emergencies like that happen because her state of panic could have gotten her bank account wiped out. Had she taken a minute to think about the email she received, she would have realized that she never did a free trial for that company. And had she checked her bank account either by calling or thru the app on her phone before calling the guy, she would have realized that $700 had never been taken from her account...I don't think she even had that much money in her account anyway. And I also told/reminded her that she should always be suspicious of someone who rushes her, is overly pushy or who talks fast...this guy did all three things. He also remotely accessed her laptop which I told her is always a red flag.

This happened earlier this year and she's been super diligent about protecting her personal/financial infor since then, so she has learned a lesson. The guy was super pushy and may have been a bit intimidating to her, but the fact that at 16 yrs old she missed so many red flags and couldn't find an off ramp to this interaction was a little concerning... It makes me nervous about how she'll do when she goes off to college next fall. We're going to keep working with her (and our younger son as well), but right now I'm thinking it may be better for her to start out at a local college and transfer out later on. [/quote]

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