PALM COAST, Fla — Thieves hijacked the home phone number from a Palm Coast couple, then scammed them out of thousands of dollars.
Jay Twardosz told Action 9 Consumer Investigator Jeff Deal, “That’s big-time money.”
Jay Twardosz and his wife Joan live mostly on social security and rely on their landline to make calls. But scammers moved or “ported” their home phone number to a phone the scammers controlled. At first, the couple had no idea their phone number had been taken over. All they knew was that for some reason their home phone line stopped working. By the time they figured it out, the criminals had used it to get a cash advance of nearly $5,000 on their credit card.
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Ever since they retired in Palm Coast 32-years ago, they’ve relied on their landline to keep in touch with friends and family and they’ve always counted on Bank of America to keep their money safe.
“And I never had a fault with them for 32 years. Amazing,” said Jay Twardosz.
In June, all of that changed. The couples’ landline went out. Two days later, they got an email alert from Bank of America, letting them know about the “Direct Deposit Cash Advance” they requested for $4,800. The problem is, the retirees claim they never requested the cash advance and they don’t check their email very often.
Joan Twardosz explained, “It’s a shame. We should be more educated to the computer.”
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According to the Twardosz’, what they later learned was that someone had transferred or “ported” their AT&T landline phone number to a Verizon cell phone. The scammers then impersonated them and requested the cash advance. When Bank of America called or texted the couple’s phone number to confirm, they got the scammers instead, and the transaction was approved.
This is what the Federal Communications Commission calls a port-out scam. First, scammers gather personal and banking information connected to their victims, often purchasing it from cyber criminals on the dark web. Armed with that personal and banking information, they use the hijacked phone number as verification to give the appearance it’s a legitimate transaction.
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In this case, the couple was left on the hook for the $4,800. Even though they made a fraud claim with Bank of America that included a message from AT&T showing their landline phone number was ported out unauthorized two days before the fraud, Bank of America sent them a letter last month letting them know they were “unable to approve” their claim.
The couple said hours on the phone with Bank of America looking for answers didn’t help either.
“And that we were guilty of taking the money,” said Joan Twardosz recalling conversations with bank representatives.
Since the Twardosz’ live mostly on social security, they said paying off the cash advance would wipe out much of their savings.
But a few days after Action 9 contacted Bank of America with some questions about the situation, the couple got good news. The bank let them know they had determined the cash advance was fraud after all and removed the advance from their account. It gave the couple the peace of mind they’d been missing for weeks.
“Terrible. We can’t sleep at night. We were up all hours of the night,” Jay Twardosz said about the weeks they spent trying to get the situation resolved.
You typically have to provide a PIN from your old carrier to be able to port a phone number. Action 9 reached out to Verizon to ask if one was used in this case and what other information must be provided. Verizon said it couldn’t share specific details about what happened because of privacy purposes. The company did point out it has a feature called Number Lock that requires a secure PIN to move to another carrier.
Bank of America also wouldn’t provide details because of client privacy, but a spokesperson sent this statement:
“We take account fraud very seriously. After receiving additional information, we were able to determine criminals accessed our client’s account. We positively resolved the claim and credited their account.”