A Pulaski banker thousands of a miles from the scene of a crime stepped up to save his own customer thousands of dollars. According to the Giles County Sheriff’s Department, everybody — especially senior citizens — should pay attention to this warning.
GILES COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — A Pulaski banker thousands of a miles from the scene of a crime stepped up to save his own customer thousands of dollars. According to the Giles County Sheriff’s Department, everybody — especially senior citizens — should pay attention to this warning.
It started to unfold on Thursday, Sept. 5. Investigators said this scam is rooted in all the usual tactics that include an implied threat, a sense of urgency, and someone trying to separate you from your cash.
However, according to Giles County Sheriff Kyle Helton, this case has a happy ending, thanks in no small part to a banker across the ocean who went the extra mile to look out for his customers.
“When I got that call, it kind of shocked me because there’s a huge time difference there,” Patrick Gilbert, senior vice president and Giles County executive of First National Bank in Pulaski, told News 2.
The banking executive said he and his family were knee deep in a special vacation in Lisbon, Portugal, when Gilbert got a distressing phone call from back home regarding a bank scam that was happening at that very moment in Giles County.
“Most of these threat actors will have people on the phone that will not allow them to get off that phone and tell them to ignore family members or anybody else that’s trying to communicate with them,” Gilbert explained.
According to Gilbert, a scammer spoofed the bank’s phone number and was pretending to be a bank employee, lying to a bank customer in their mid-70s.
Gilbert said the scammer was threatening that customer with false information about being added to a sex offender registry if they didn’t transfer money from their bank account and put in a crypto account. The scammer was allegedly hoping to get the senior to withdraw $14,000.
“That gets a person emotional, and they tell you, ‘Well there’s a quick remedy. Allow us to get access to money and all your problems will go away,'” Gilbert told News 2. “With that sense of urgency, at lot of people don’t think and put two and two together.”
Fortunately, a family member of the senior reached Gilbert and conveyed the seriousness of the issue.
Gilbert said he immediately stopped his vacation and began making calls to his fellow bankers in the region, as well as making contact with the senior, who was still on the phone with the scammer and on their way to a crypto machine located in Northern Alabama.
“I just let them know red flag after red flag had come up…You know, we don’t ask for account numbers, we don’t ask for information like that,” the banker explained.
According to Gilbert, the family member was the true hero in this story for realizing something was amiss and having the wherewithal to call his relative’s local bank to get answers.
“I feel great about that, and I feel great that our bank tries to manage our customer base and to watch out for our clients,” Gilbert told News 2. “This threat is real; it’s happening on a large scale.”
Gilbert said the key is to not only share information with your financial experts and your family, but also not to be afraid to ask for help if there’s a problem or a red flag.
If you get a call and question its validity, Gilbert recommends hanging up and calling your bank right away to see if the other call was legitimate. Chances are you will have saved yourself a lot of money.