NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Fla. – A New Smyrna Beach couple received a fraud alert message from their bank about suspicious activity on their account.
Despite disputing the charge, $950 was withdrawn from their account.
Austin and Jessica Reaves are still trying to understand how it happened.
“I think the bank should have protected me in that situation, and they didn’t,” Austin Reaves said. “It was clear fraud.”
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Their bank, Wells Fargo, also flagged the charge as suspicious.
The Reaves received a high-priority notification in their account from “fraud detection” asking them to review recent card activity.
At the same time, they got a text message asking, “Do you recognize the declined transaction of $950 to Coinbase on card 3585? Reply Yes or No.”
The Reaves replied “No,” but the bank’s system responded, “invalid command,” and…
Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) on every sensitive account, specifically your primary email and banking apps, opting for authenticator apps over SMS to mitigate the risk of SIM-swap fraud.