MEMBERS of USAA Federal Savings Bank are being warned to look out for scammers who are spoofing the company’s phone number to steal private information.

One customer had their accounts locked and $2,000 wiped from their savings.

“Over the course of the last couple of weeks and couple of months, we’ve seen an uptick in fraudsters going after consumers,” said Stacey Nash, the USAA senior vice president.

“The most recent uptick we’ve seen is where fraudsters are posing as the bank.”

Ed and Cyndy Evans said the exact thing happened to them.

“It was a very well-disguised perpetrator,” Ed told CBS affiliate KTVK.

“They disguised the USAA phone number. They disguised the USAA text message to authenticate yourself, and then they got into our account.”

Ed said the scammers were able to transfer $2,000 from their account through Zelle.

A few days later, there was another surprise.

“All of our accounts said unavailable,” said Ed. “We can’t use our debit card. We’ve actually had to tap other resources to make a mortgage payment, which normally comes out of USAA.”

He and Cyndy tried to call USAA for help but were met with wait times that lasted hours.

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“On Monday, it was a 13-hour wait,” said Ed. “Tuesday morning, we did the same thing, and the same thing happened. And at that time, I believe it was an 11-hour wait. The next day it was nine hours.”

When reached by the outlet, Nash said she couldn’t comment on the couple’s specific situation but said that customer service lines have been extremely busy in general due to the increase in scams across the banking industry.

“When [the scammers] get the member on the line, they’re basically saying, ‘I’m calling to help you. I understand you’ve got fraud on your account, but before I can help you, I’m just going to need some security information.’ And they’re asking for login credentials, one-time codes,” said Nash.

“What I have to emphasize is banks will never call you and ask for that information.”

Experts advise customers to never give their information to anyone who has called, texted, or emailed.

If you receive a suspicious call, hang up and contact your bank using the number on the back of your debit or credit card.

Lastly, if you believe you may have been a victim, don’t be afraid to report it.

“All banks do whatever they can to retrieve the funds, recover the funds, protect the consumer, the member,” said Nash.

“The best thing to do if you’ve been the victim of one of these things is to immediately contact your bank because the faster that we know about it, the more opportunity we have to do something about it.”

Cyndy and Ed eventually had access to their account restored after nearly a week with the missing money returned.