Leslie agreed that something was fishy and that this was a scam. She worked with her parents to notify their bank, the attorney general and the Better Business Bureau of this scam. And, when she called back the number a few days later, it was using a different utility company name.
Gary said he's lucky they realized something was off.
“If not for Cindy walking into the room, I would have provided my credit card information,” he said. “The person on the phone was very convincing.”
The deceptive search result
Unfortunately, this was not the end of their encounters with fraudsters.
Cindy fell victim to a scam when she wanted to check on an Amazon order she’d recently made. She googled Amazon’s phone number, and a fake number popped up as the first result.
Believing it to be accurate, she provided the representative a lot of personal information when requested to so he could “look up her order.”
During this conversation, the scammer had also convinced her that he needed to connect to her computer remotely to further assist her.
The next day, Cindy noticed small amounts of money being deducted from her bank account and called Leslie. They realized this was another scam, and immediately connected with U.S. Bank to close their accounts, and then went on to report it to all three credit bureaus to put a freeze on her credit.