04/05/2024
Yesterday, I was alone in the office when I got a phone call that showed PNC Bank on the screen as the caller (this is our bank). A foreign-sounding guy said that my card had some suspicious charges on it and asked if I had spent ~$3200 in Malaysia & $1100 in Amazon charges. I said those were not our charges. He then said that he would pass me to his supervisor to take care of this & I was passed to another foreign sounding guy. He said that they had someone claiming to be me and had used my social security number & company tax ID number to verify the account. I said, “if it was a tax ID number, then that would be my work card, correct?” They said “Yes.” I asked, “which company are we talking about?” They said, “the work debit card.”
While I was suspicious at first, now I was sure it was a scam for the following reasons:
1) We never use our work debit card for purchases, only for depositing checks after hours.
2) They did not identify which company it was for (we have two working LLC’s).
3) I had not received a notification via text that I had suspicious charges on my card, which usually happens if something is out of the ordinary.
4) While I was talking with them, I had logged into my account and did not see anything out of the ordinary.
I told them that I would not be discussing this over the phone with them, but would go to my local branch office of PNC to take care of it. They were pushy & said I should do it immediately to stop any continuing charges. I hung up on them & called our local branch manager. He looked at our account and said there was nothing out of the ordinary.
Just wanted to let everyone know how sophisticated some of these scammers are getting.
