Consumer complaint received 2023-02-14
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
State: MD
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
On XX/XX/2023, I received a text from a number pretending to be Wells Fargo that was an alert of an attempted wire transfer of {$5000.00}. It asked if it was me and I responded no. I then went to report the text to the Wells Fargo phishing email since I was unsure if it was them. I also called their customer service number and phishing number multiple times to get to a representative to confirm if there was actually an attempt, or if they could help me. The calls did not go through initially, maybe because I was calling back to back. As soon as I got disconnected from my outgoing call, I got an incoming call from XXXX ( XXXX ) XXXX, which is Wells Fargo 's customer service number. A man told me he was XXXX XXXX calling me from Wells Fargo and asked me to confirm again if I attempted to wire {$5000.00} and I told him no. He then told me because there was attempted fraud, he would need to walk me through the process of a manual payment reversal procedure. I went to my online banking account and he had me confirm some information to verify my account, but I never gave him initial information. He knew what kind of accounts I had, and had the last XXXX digits to my old debit card. I was a bit confused, because it was my old card, but he still knew it already. He asked me to confirm the last XXXX transactions from my checking and savings account, and then the balance. I never gave him my full account numbers or username or password. He then proceeded to walk me step by step through this " manual payment reversal '' that he told me was the process to cancel this attempted wiring. Essentially as a result, he actually walked me through wiring {$5000.00} to XXXX XXXX at XXXX XXXX XXXX from my savings account. As I questioned the send recipient part, he reassured me that this would fail, because they had to do this as part of the procedure. Once I pressed send, of course it was successful. I then told him that's not what he said would happen, and I panicked and wanted to talk to his supervisor or someone else. I realized it was possibly a scam when he wanted to walk me through taking the rest of my money out of my savings account. I waited on hold for him to transfer me to someone else, and then right when I was going to hang up, he got back on the line pretending to be someone else. I then hung up, and called Wells Fargo 's phishing number and told them that I believe I was just scammed. Of course Wells Fargo asked me what happened and they said they would recall the wiring and see if I could get my money refunded. They mentioned this would take XXXX business days. However, they issued the letter denying my case already by XX/XX/XXXX. I had called them XX/XX/XXXX asking more follow up questions about how this person was able to impersonate the bank and use their number, and they were of no help. I also asked about my status, and talked to multiple people who reassured me that they were doing an online banking case, and the fraud case. I'm convinced they never even investigated this, and only made me liable because I did the wiring. However this was under fraudulent pretenses, and I was scammed by someone impersonating them. Throughout the call " XXXX XXXX '' had all the Wells Fargo representative jargon, and kept telling me he was calling from a recorded line. He also provided an id number for him and his supervisor " XXXX XXXX ''.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation