ATLANTA — An elaborate fraud scheme with criminals impersonating the FBI.
A Georgia man says he was hooked for three weeks by the scammers who gained access to his bank and credit card account information.
“The way they did it, because it was so slowly, it’s like cooking a frog, you slowly turn up the temperature. Same thing,” Edinson Jorquera told Channel 2 Consumer Investigator Justin Gray.
It started with a phone call.
“It says on my phone, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Then you start panicking, right?” Jorquera said.
The first thing he did was Google the phone number.
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“It was the phone numbers for the FBI in New York,” he said.
Jorquera was told that he is a suspect linked to a financial crime ring.
He was even sent a real FBI wanted poster of a Russian suspected of financial crimes and told his identity was tied to the wanted man.
On a video call, the fake FBI agents looked and acted the part.
“A jacket, FBI in blue, with a big sign in the back, Department of Justice. So, everything looked legit,” Jorquera said.
It stretched on not just for hours or days, but for three weeks.
Jorquera was required by the so-called FBI agents to call and check in every four hours.
He was also told to sign a confidentiality agreement with a $500,000 penalty, and warned not to tell his wife or any other law enforcement.
“He said that I could not talk to any local police or local FBI because they were actually thinking there could be some people involved locally,” Jorquera said.
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“This is their job. They’re coming to take your money,” FBI Special Agent Aaron Seres said.
Seres is a real FBI agent in charge of FBI Atlanta’s financial crimes squad.
He says these long cons pretending to your bank, the federal government and even the FBI are the new normal
“If these bad guys had their way, they would string you out as long as possible, get you to cash out all your accounts, your retirement accounts, your savings accounts,” Seres said.
He says the easiest way to prevent the fraud is with that first phone call. Legitimate law enforcement would have no problem with you hanging up the phone. A scammer will do anything to keep you on the line.
“I’m telling you now, I am an FBI agent, I call people all the time, and some people don’t believe it’s us. I say, no problem, you call our FBI office in Atlanta, we can independently verify, and then you know who I am,” Seres said.
As part of the fake investigation, Jorquera was asked to send his bank records and credit card information.
“I sent pictures of my driver’s license and my passport too,” Jorquera said.
It was only when the fake agents sent what they claimed was a warrant for his arrest that a skeptical Jorquera called the real FBI here in Atlanta and reported the crime.
“I still felt very anxious every time the phone would ring. I would be like, oh my god, I mean, are they coming? When I’m going to see the black SUVs outside the house,” he said.
Jorquera closed bank accounts and credit cards and filed fraud reports with credit bureaus. So far, he has not lost any money.
The FBI says these schemes are designed to slowly lure you in.
There’s always an answer to make you have a little bit of a piece of, hey, maybe this is real, right? And so, it’s going to continually prod you to take the next step, next step,” Seres said.
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