Consumer complaint received 2023-11-06
Company: Early Warning Services, LLC
State: FL
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
On Wednesday XX/XX/XXXX, I was contacted by a valid XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX phone number. I answered the call from what I believed to be a trusted number for my financial institution. The initial point of contact was by a gentleman claiming to be from the fraud area of XXXX  XXXX XXXX, and informed me that someone had opened another checking account in my name in another state and was trying to access my funds. They stated that because the funds requested was more than I had in my account, the transactions were placed on a hold and my account was flagged. For the duration of this 45 minutes call, I spoke with another gentleman named XXXX who was a manager of the same department that contacted me. He assured me that XXXX  XXXX XXXX took this situations seriously, and convinced me that Zelle offered a protection for my funds, that would essentially place them on a 24 hour hold, and released back to my account after an Anti Fraud test had been completed, and more information about this fraud account would be returned to me as well. I trusted the information fraudulently being given, and with that I transferred my money to a Zelle Protection Code. When the fraud test was at 97 % XXXX got back on the line and stated someone was trying to access my account and he was booted out of the test. The funds transferred out were then back in my account, and XXXX told me my account would be monitored and he would follow up in 24 hours. As expected, I got the follow up call the next day. It was a similar process to the day before of trying to complete the fraud test. Again, I sent my funds to the Zelle Protection Code ( since the day before went okay ) and began the fraud test. After 30 minutes, I got a text that the funds were received by me and the call disconnected. I waited roughly 15 minutes for this manager to contact me back as we had not finished the fraud test. When he hadnt called back, I decided to call him back. The number that called me initially was the same number I called back, and it took me to XXXX  XXXX XXXX. I began explaining the situation and was again transferred to the Zelle Fraud team. This time, another gentleman let me know the whole thing was a scam, and I sent my money to what appears to be myself. He let me know that the bank took this very seriously but because it was a Zelle transaction the likelihood of recovering my funds was slim to none. My whole life savings gone in seconds. He relayed to me that there were several indicators of a scam, and they were aware of this scam, but couldnt promise to recover any funds at all. He relayed to me that the number I called must have been a spoofed number as it was an inbound only number and should not have been a number to dial me at all. This was all said to me like I should have been aware, but XXXX  XXXX XXXX had not sent out any information to its account holders about current scams, and in a world where online banking is pushed so hard, it was hard for me not to trust what appeared to be a valid bank number contacting me. A claim was then filed where they would try to request the funds back from the bank that received my Zelle transfer, but again there was no guarantee anything would come of it - just sit tight for 10-45 days while the claim processes. XXXX  XXXX XXXX sent mass emails to the clients about current bank scams less than 24 hours after my claim was filed ( confirmed by several acquaintances using the same bank ).

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation