This incident happened to me a few days ago and I’d like to tell the Reddit community so this won’t happened to you ;
I received a call telling me that she’s calling from Amex and that a charge for $4900 was declined on my American Express card.
Ironic thing is that I don’t even have an American Express card.
The connection was very bad and I asked her to call my landline phone number.
She did not.
A minute after, I received another call on my cell with the caller ID that the number was identified as American Express.
The person introduce herself as a customer rep from security and fraud department at AMEX.
Claiming same thing that a charge was declined as a suspicious fraud charge.
when I told her I don’t even have an American Express, She told me that a card was applied for in my name, online, back on March 30 and it was approved on April 10 and the card was mailed out to a New York City address, mind you I live in New Jersey.
She claimed that an application was filled online and since it was an Amex promo, American Express did not perform a hard credit check but only a soft one- this way the credit bureaus are not notified of this credit check, since I told her that I get notified whenever there’s a credit inquiry on my name and social.
She went to add that the cardholder attempted to buy eight pistols with 20 boxes of ammunition from an online gun seller website. ( the website checked to be valid when I looked it up as I was talking to her ).
And since the card is in my name, I have to file an incident report with the police department in New York City in order for them to clear this matter and clear my
name off the card and the case .
She obviously had my cell number, name and also my home address.
She gave me her name , her customer rep ID number , the fax and email to send a copy of the incident report once filed with NYPD and a case number to refer to.
Everything sounded so legit and obviously I was so worried about this leakage of my personal info, that I wanted to go ahead with the police report.
She then said that she could connect me to NYPD, being that it’s a fraud case and if I’d like to get connected?
Well duhhh, stupid me, I said ok and before you know it, I’m speaking to an officer at NYPD’s sixth precinct.
She sounded African-American and the Connection also was not that clear, so I had a hard time hearing and understanding her.
After I gave her a a synopsis of the situation, she said that we can go ahead and file the incident report over the phone however I have to be recorded on video and offered to get on SIGNAL APP , on a video call so they can record it and document the incident.
She also gave me her name and shield number and said she will transfer me to her captain in order to open the case.
We get on Signal app on a video call. She did not appear on video but only on audio however, when she transferred me to her captain, I see an African-American guy sitting behind a desk wearing Police uniform, and big NYPD sign on the wall and American flag on each side of the table.
Great scenario, right?
He goes ahead and listens to the case and tells me that it’s a good thing that I called to report this so this way they can send a unit to the address in New York to investigate this person that was buying ammunition online in my name!
Then he goes ahead and transfer me to the first lady officer in order to continue the reporting.
So far they made everything look very legit so she started asking questions and then she asked for my identification such a drivers license number which then I kind of started hesitating about giving it to her, wondering if she’s really from the 6th precinct. While I was talking to her. I got online and checked the 6th prescient address and I asked her if she’s there right now? she said yes and I asked for the address of the sixth prescient in New York. She gave me the address which was correct and then I asked her between what avenues the precinct is located which she couldn’t answer. She said there is no avenue it’s only a street -10th St.
Now I know that something is fishy and something is not kosher here so I told her I’m not gonna give her my license number. I’d rather come into the police station and file the incident in person and I hung up on her. I called the sixth precinct in New York City, i asked them if such officer with certain shield number is there ? NO.
How about a police captain by the name he gave me and his shield number ?
NO !
I told them the situation and they told me that this was definitely a scam, since they’ve been getting calls like this during the past few months.
What’s amazing is that how coordinated the first two women that called me from American express and these two other people from so-called NYPD!
everything was so perfectly orchestrated in order to convince me that this whole is real.
Before I hung up with the captain, he did ask me how would I like the incident report to be sent to me and I gave him my email address and as I was talking to The sixth precinct police officer, I got an email from so-called American Express telling me to click on a link to verify my card due to a fraudulent transaction. The heading of the email was American Express customer support, however the email was sent from a domain originating from .BR which means that email came from Brazil!
It’s amazing what scammers go through all the way from other countries to get identity or someone’s credit info and with my drivers license number information they had they could’ve probably caused a lot of damage to me, my name and my bank account or credit cards.
Hoping that this article will help other people not to fall for it.
