THIEVES WANT TO STEAL YOUR PHONE NUMBER… TO STEAL YOUR MONEY

    Everyone knows thieves want to steal money– cold, hard, cash or usually something can sell or use to get money. Well, the most recent scam I’ve come across in reporting is an intricate scam that requires a thief to steal your phone number first.
And then they steal your money.
Redmond Police say they’re investigating seven cases of scammers stealing phone numbers from T-mobile customers so they can access their bank accounts. I also talked to a woman in Everett, Carrie Hartwig, who actually first contacted my co-worker Jesse Jones about her experience.
Carrie wanted to know what the heck was going on after she nearly lost $1920 when thieves attempted the scam on her.
“They basically yeah stole my number– they had my phone cut off,” Carrie Hartwig said.
So first things first: the scam is not just specific to T-mobile. That’s what T-mobile says and that’s what the cops say. In fact, I found reports of a similar scam in the NYTimes targeting customers with Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-mobile — this time for cryptocurrency.
In Carrie’s case, she was able to get service restored to her phone and received a fraud alert from Chase bank about the attempted transfer of $1920.
“So they had successfully got on my account, got on my bank account, saw what we had in the bank, and tried to take all but 10 dollars!” she said. Chase froze her account and the thieves never got their hands on her cash.
So how does this thing work?
Redmond Police spokesperson Andrea Wolf-Buck explained it all starts with thieves getting your personal information: your name, phone number, and likely your social security number. There have been plenty of data breaches– we’ve all heard of them and probably been affected by one. Home Depot. Target. Equifax.
After thieves nab some of your precious info, including your phone number digits, they use that information to transfer their victim’s T-mobile phone number to a Metro PCS phone. That means their Metro PCS phone now has the victim’s phone number attached to it, and the victim’s phone no longer works.
Technology experts say thieves then contact the victim’s bank and when they want to reset the password on that account, a verification code is sent to the phone number on the mobile device in the scammer’s hands. That allows thieves to get in and empty out– or at least try to empty out– the account. Unfortunately, there are plenty of Reddit threads with comments from people who’ve experienced variations of this scam first-hand.
​I reached out to T-mobile but they didn’t provide anyone to talk on camera. They do have an entire part of their website dedicated to this scam, though. It states in part, “Our industry is experiencing a phone number port out scam that could impact you.”
Here’s the solution: the site recommends people “call 611 from your T-mobile phone… [and] create a 6-to-15-digit passcode that will be added to your account.”
If anyone tries to steal your number, T-mobile says, “the new carrier will be required to validate the request with T-mobile using your passcode.”
Have you had this happen to you? Let me know!