A FAMILY has lost over $63,000 dollars after they received a fraudulent phone call that forwarded them to who they were told was their bank.

Wells Fargo called the customer alerting him of fraud on his account and he was shocked to find two wire transfers he didn’t do.

The Pennsylvania man claimed that he had never made a wire transfer in his life, but the bank only gave two reasons the fraud could have happened.

“This was done by you or someone with your password and username and therefore we are unable to help you,” Wells Fargo allegedly told Joe Farrell, exclusively reported by ABC affiliate WHTM.

On December 26, 2023, Farrell logged into his savings account and saw more than $63,000 was gone.

$24,832 was transferred by wire to an account at one online bank and another $38,437 was transferred to a different account at a different online bank.

The bank claimed that they would have sent Farrell a code to input on the bank’s site before allowing a wire transfer.

Farrell remembered that he had received a call four days earlier claiming to be from the Wells Fargo fraud department claiming that someone in Fort Lauderdale was opening a debit card in his name.

He confirmed that it was not him and the person on the phone promised to get it figured out.

“They said ‘call this number *72,” followed by a phone number, Farrell recalled.

“They said it was just verifying to Wells Fargo that we’ve made this contact.

Farrell hung up and called the number he was given, allegedly on the phone with another member of Wells Fargo.

“The *72 scam has been around since as early as 2004, 20 years ago. But it hasn’t really surfaced in terms of attacking multi-factor authentication. Until now,” cybersecurity expert Johnathan Weissman told the outlet.

The FBI explained the Farrell that *72 was a call forwarding method.

It forwards voice calls, not texts, so Weissman suspects that the scammers selected an option on the bank website to receive a code through a phone call rather than a text.

He believes what happened to Farrell was called social engineering which involves manipulating somebody to give their information that may be used in a fraudulent way.

“So really what it does is, it causes our customers to be frantic, and that leads to poor decisions ultimately,” Dan Cusick, a Wells Fargo fraud and claims executive, said in a video provided by the bank.

“We’re looking ahead to four years of college tuition and so this is not a timely thing for us to lose savings and you trust the bank that it’s safe,” Mary Farrell told the station.

The outlet contacted Wells Fargo and less than a day later, all the money was returned to their account.

The U.S. Sun has previously reported on multiple Wells Fargo customers who have experienced fraud on their accounts.

A California school teacher lost $20,000 after a scam phone call.

Ann Booras was left “literally shaking” and in “complete and utter panic,” she told local ABC affiliate KGO-TV.

“The person on the other end said, ‘I’m calling from Wells Fargo, we’re investigating some fraud that’s going on – are you trying to wire $20,000 from your savings account?'” Booras explained.

“I said, ‘No I am not.’ And he said, ‘Well then this is definitely fraud, let’s get moving.'”

The scammer told her to wire the money to the bank’s fraud department to keep it safe, but also claimed there was another $5,000 fraudulent charge on her account.

Only after speaking to a bank teller did she find out that it was all an elaborate scam and that the person she was speaking to was a scammer.

Though the bank was able to stop the $5,000 transfer, they denied her request for reimbursement because she had technically authorized the payment.

Another customer lost $55,000 after she responded to text messages she thought were from Wells Fargo.

“They caught me off guard, I heard Wells Fargo, I heard money was coming out of my account,” Ashely Willis said to CBS affiliate WKMG-TV.

The text message said, ”Reply with your current password for DEACTIVATION,” but the scammers later called Willis and she gave them her bank account code and password.

“I don’t recall exactly what happened but they called me back and I said ‘Well I’m heading to the bank now,’ and they hung up,” she said.

However, it was too late and the $55,000 had already been drained from her account.

“It’s very emotional because I just bought into it 100%,” she said.

Willis was given a credit of $27, 390 for the charges and Wells Fargo later confirmed that the rest of the money was credited to her account.

The U.S. Sun has reached out to Wells Fargo for comment.

The U.S. Sun has reached out to Wells Fargo for comment. THe