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PROVO — The same telephone number calls. And calls again. And again.
Spam calls don't usually keep trying, so the Provo mom takes a break from washing dishes to search the phone number online. It matches that of a government agency, specifically Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Sasha Gang, a lawful permanent resident from South Korea, came to the U.S. about 14 years ago for school, and met and married her husband. For much of that time, she says, she has been a stay-at-home wife and mother.
The phone rings yet again. She doesn't answer it. Another ring — this time she picks up.
"Because I thought this is not a normal call, you know?" Gang recalled.
From the get-go, the woman on the other end of the line asks her to verify her information — her full legal name, when she came to the U.S., how many family members she has, where she is from. The woman already knows all the answers.
"And every piece of information they had was me, so that's kind of how they start the conversation," Gang said.
That phone call late last month resulted in Gang being swindled out of $45,000, money she and her husband had been saving to buy a house. She wanted to tell her story in the hopes it will prevent others from falling victim to the same scam.
Government-spoofing calls now common
Drew Scown, a supervisory special agent with the FBI in Salt Lake City, said the agency has seen "a lot of instances where fraudsters, bad guys, will impersonate the government. And that can be pretending to be from U.S. Immigration" or any other government agency.
"It can be pretty devastating because the bad guy will keep coming up with excuses why the victim needs to send more and more money until they have basically bled the victim completely dry," he said.
Last year, Utah tallied 113 reported victims of scams involving someone pretending to be government officials, resulting in nearly $1.5 million in losses for those victims, according to FBI statistics. In 2020, the victim count was 120 with $910,147 lost.
In Gang's case, the woman claimed to be an ICE employee and barraged Gang with accusations of money laundering, entering the U.S. with a forged passport, counterfeiting and involvement in drug gangs.
Though Gang says she knows none of those claims are true, she became "really scared" because the woman knew "almost all my information" despite Gang's and her husband's focus on privacy and cybersecurity. He works in the IT industry, Gang said.
"And I knew that this was not fake. I knew this is something real: They knew my information, or someone really has my information and I have an identity thief — that's why they know. This is not fake, this is real," Gang recalled thinking.
"I assured her I am an honest immigrant who pays taxes every year and has no criminal record," she said, adding that she had committed none of the crimes of which she was accused.
But the caller told Gang that the case had been handed over to the FBI and the IRS, and if she didn't commit those crimes, someone else was using her identity to commit them.
Scown said those who run such scams are "professionals" with "silver tongues" who have learned just what to say to make their victims panic.
"This is what they do full time, every day, so they become very good at what things they can say that can push people's buttons, that will frighten them and convince them that they need to send the money," he said.
Government agencies won't request money transfers
The woman told Gang that if she didn't cooperate with the investigation, she would be considered a criminal in the U.S. and deported. The woman also said her husband, her parents in South Korea and her husband's parents in the U.S. would face prosecution as co-conspirators. The caller warned that Gang's 5-year-old daughter would be placed in foster care.
The woman on the other line gave Gang her law enforcement badge number and put her on the phone with a man who purported to be a manager. They sent Gang emails with attachments on government letterhead. They said there were warrants for Gang's arrest. They demanded she answer another phone call from a number that appeared to come from the FBI Salt Lake City office.
And the people on the other line told Gang that if she hung up the phone, she would be arrested immediately by FBI agents. "Of course, I was really scared, because if you see the movies, once they say that the FBI agent is coming to arrest me, I was like, 'What?' It feels like the movie scene, a lot of police cars around our neighbors and trying to put the handcuffs on me."
The callers told her she needed to download an application that gave them access to her cellphone and demanded that she prove her innocence. To do so, the callers told her she needed to go to the bank and transfer money to a government account as proof that she wasn't laundering money. Their reasoning, Gang said, was that someone who launders money isn't able to withdraw money so simply. They requested a $45,000 wire transfer and said they would return the money with a government-issued check.
Scown said scammers are "aggressive in their tactics" to get victims to stay on the phone with them. If given a moment to think, they know the person will question whether the call is legitimate. They don't want the person to have the chance to speak to a family member, friend or law enforcement about what is happening.
"That kind of goes along with that they will often try to hustle things along and try to create a sense of urgency to try to encourage the victim to send them the money," he said. "They want to make sure that they're controlling the narrative that the victim is hearing."
How to avoid falling victim
No one from the government will call a person and tell them that they need to send them money in that way, nor will they threaten arrest or deportation over the phone, Scown said. If an officer has an arrest warrant for someone, they will simply go to that person's home and arrest them, he said.
Anytime someone claiming to be from the government threatens someone over the phone in that way, it is a strong indication it's a scam, according to Scown.
But what the callers said felt so real that Gang questioned what she had done wrong, she remembered. "So, I didn't really think straight at the time," she said.
In that moment, all she could think was: "I need to make sure my family is safe."
"Some people might say that you're stupid, it's too obvious. … I know government never asks for money. But when it comes to a panicked mind, you never know what you actually can really do," Gang said.
Gang went to the bank and transferred the $45,000 — money she and her husband had been saving for their nine years of marriage to purchase a home — to the callers. They then requested another $30,000 and sent her an email with a sample of a government-issued check with her name on it. But by then her husband had seen the activity on their account and froze it.
The callers were spying on her texts, Gang said, and told her not to text her husband back.
"My husband noticed a strange feeling and texted me that he was heading home in the middle of working. The scammers noticed my husband was heading home and coerced me to go to a hotel and made me convinced that it would be the safest place for further investigation," she said.
Her husband sensed that something was wrong and called 911, telling police the location of her phone.
"The police finally stopped my car on the street; I was terrified that the FBI agents the scammers were talking about were following me to arrest me and my husband. I got out of the car and asked the police once again if I could really trust them," Gang recalled.
"At that moment I realized that everything I had been through since the morning was a lie. My legs felt so weak and shaken that I had no choice but to sit on the floor and cry."
About three weeks later, Gang says she's still in shock from the incident. She and her husband have been working with the police to try to get answers. They have also requested a return of their money with Bank of America, where the transfer was sent, but have not yet received help, according to Gang.
She knows the money likely went to a different account and getting it back depends on whether law enforcement officials are able to trace it. "It's like a pyramid, and so if they can track down and they stop the transfer, the money might be able to come back, but that's a really, really tiny hope," Gang said — a hope that continues to fade each day.
But thankfully, she says, the couple still had enough money saved for closing costs on a house.
Scown said it is rare for victims to get their money back, especially if it is sent through methods preferred by scammers such as gift cards or cryptocurrency. Wire transfers are also difficult to trace, as the money often gets quickly sent to accounts in different countries, he said.
Gang noted that having not grown up in the U.S., she and other immigrants may be more likely to believe the threats made by the scammers.
"If I grew up in the U.S., I'd probably feel more secure. But because I'm an immigrant, I also went through a lot of the legal process before. So I know it can be sometimes frustrating, it can be sometimes scary, and I'm sure there's a lot of immigrants like me, too," she said.
Tips for staying safe from such scams:
- If a government agent calls to ask you questions, get their name and find the agency's phone number online. Call the agency's main phone number and ask if that person really works there, and if they do, ask to be transferred to them directly, Scown said.
- If you do not wish to speak to a law enforcement or government agent over the phone, ask to speak to them at their office or at your home instead. You also have a right to have an attorney present when speaking to law enforcement.
- Be wary of anyone you don't know who calls you.
- Keep social media safety in mind. Scown says scammers often find personal information about you using your social media account, or those of friends and family members.
- If you do get scammed, immediately stop talking to the scammer. Call your bank and alert it to the scam; and report it to your local police and to the Internet Crime Complaint Center immediately. The sooner police become aware, the better chance of getting your money back — though that is never guaranteed, according to Scown.
