7 On Your Side helps retrieve nearly $20k after NJ paramedic scammed by fake bank reps

NEW JERSEY (WABC) — A New Jersey paramedic lost $19,000 after receiving a call from a poser pretending to be her bank.

The impersonator managed to steal money from her personal checking and savings account and also her daughter’s college savings account that was connected.

These types of scams are getting not just more elaborate, but more convincing as well. In this case, the scammers sent an Uber driver to their target’s home to collect a debit card.

Ziamara Lopez is used to saving lives but what happened to her almost put her in cardiac arrest.

“My heart dropped. I was in disbelief,” she told Eyewitness News.

The paramedic, single mom, and grad school student has been saving for her daughter’s college education, ever since Kaiya was born 18 years ago. She said her efforts were nothing but “blood, sweat, tears and hard work.”

In May, Lopez received a call and displayed on the caller ID read ‘Wells Fargo Bank.’ She answered without hesitation.

“She was like ‘Hello, this is so and so from Wells Fargo. We noticed some fraudulent activity on your account. We were calling because we noticed some fraudulent activity on your account. Is there any way that you can check your account and tell me if the charges that you see on your account were made by you,” Lopez said.

The fake bank representative texted, got codes, went into her checking, and then the savings account and stole nearly $20,000; but then, something even more sinister and scary happened.

The imposter falsely claimed Wells Fargo had a collaboration with Uber. This was a blatant lie and a driver was on it’s way to grab her debit card for “forensic analysis.” Now that the thieves had their hands on the physical card, the hackers accessed her linked college fund and drained it completely.

“I don’t even know how to explain it. It was like my heart just left my body. My stomach was at the pit. I just I just started crying. I was on the phone with Wells Fargo, and I’m like this. This can’t be real, right? I’m like, I don’t even understand what just happened. Like, I was on the phone with one of your guys, right,” she said.

Since the scammer had the physical card, it was Christmas in summer. With Ziomara’s email alerts blowing up her phone, the real Wells Fargo was able to stop the bleeding. However, because she had been fooled by that phone call thinking she was actually dealing with her bank, Wells Fargo denied the claim saying Xiamora had enabled the fraud.

“They were basically saying, I’m not getting the money back,” Lopez said.

That’s when she decided to reach out to 7 On Your Side and we asked the bank to revive the account for the paramedic.

Dan Cusick, Wells Fargo’s Vice President of Fraud Prevention issued a reminder and said “the bank will not call you.”

“Don’t trust caller ID. We see that those numbers are spoofed quite often. Meaning, they are pretending to be from a trusted entity. It’s ok to hand up and call them back. There are numbers readily available online,” Cusick told Eyewitness News.

Wells Fargo eventually revived Lopez’s account in full after 7 On Your Side reached out to the financial institution.

“If it wasn’t for you guys, I wouldn’t have my money back. Thank you so much,” she said.

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