Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
- A Farmington woman nearly lost $5,000 to a Venmo scam.
- The scam involved a fake customer service call and remote phone access.
- Venmo resolved the issue, reminding users to contact support via official channels.
SALT LAKE CITY — This past tax season, Kristen Fillerup paid a pro to help prepare her taxes. At least, she thought she did. She heard back that her payment didn't make it.
"I thought, 'No, wait a minute. I sent it a week ago on Venmo,' and it showed that it went, and it was taken out of my account," Fillerup said.
She discovered she sent $275 to the wrong company using the same name. When they wouldn't return her money, she called Venmo.
"So, I got online and found the customer service number," she said.
Things get weird
That's where things got weird. She said she called the actual Venmo customer service number, but the call was horribly garbled. The rep told her he would call right back on another line. So, when he called, Fillerup didn't suspect he was a scammer. She thought he was from Venmo.
"In the back of my mind, I'm thinking, 'I initiated this phone call, so this is legit,'" she said. "He called back, and it was a better line – easier to understand him."
The guy on the other end asked Fillerup to download an app IT experts use to fix issues on phones, remotely.
"The next thing I know, he's controlling my phone," she said.
What she didn't know was the guy used her phone to get into her bank account, moving money from savings to checking. When he got back to her, he told her it was time for a test.
"He said, 'OK, we're going to send a dollar to somebody in your contacts,'" she said.
She picked her sister-in-law. Mind you, he's still controlling her phone.
"He's texting her like it's me," she said.
The scam is revealed
All seemed well, until her sister-in-law called.
"She said, 'Kristen, he just, he didn't send me a dollar. He sent me $4,961.' And the guy is on the phone saying, 'She just needs to send it back now,'" Fillerup recounted. "She (Kristen's sister-in-law) said, 'I think this is a scam. I'm not going to send it back.'"
The scam now revealed, Fillerup quickly had her bank shut down her account. She didn't lose a dime.
"I'm not out of any money because before they could actually take it out of the debit account, the bank just shut everything down. The money never left my account," she said.
But now, Venmo insists on her returning the $4,961 she said never left her bank account.
Still on the hook
"Every day or so, I get an email from Venmo/PayPal saying that I that I owe Venmo $4,961," she said. "And the last one I got a couple days ago said, 'You pay that and then we will pursue this fraud."
When she couldn't get Venmo to spot the fraud, Fillerup tapped me in. And the Investigators contacted Venmo to ask about all this.
We got an email response saying, "We will look into this and get back to you."
How to protect yourself
While we waited for the response, I took Fillerup's experience to Kristin Lewis, senior vice president of product at cybersecurity firm Aura.
"It's a very invasive approach," she said of the scheme that nearly robbed Kristen Fillerup of thousands of dollars.
Lewis warns that bad guys love to exploit customer service emergencies.
"It is unbelievably easy for scammers to set up a myriad of fake domains with bad information and be able to kind of intercept if somebody was looking for customer support for a specific vendor," she explained.
Lewis said a sure sign that you're talking to a scammer posing as a customer support representative is they ask you to download and install an app on your device they say will help them investigate your issue. No legitimate representative does that.
"There's almost no tech support company out there that would really need to download an app on your phone in order to troubleshoot an issue," she said.
On its website, Venmo says it will never ask to access your device remotely. And it will never ask you to install a third-party app.
We didn't hear back from Venmo before our story aired, but Fillerup said that the day after we contacted their public relations, they fixed her issue. They're no longer demanding she repay $4,960.
Venmo responded the day after our story aired, saying it has now resolved the issue and is in direct contact with the customer. A spokesperson added that the scam was not specific to Venmo and reminded users to only contact customer service through the app or official website.
