Woman Falls Victim To Scam

A Cocke County woman fell victim to a scam last week, but her persistence in trying to get her money back has thwarted some criminals out of several thousand ill gotten gains. the woman told the Cocke County Sheriff’s office she was contacted from someone claiming to be from Pay Pal saying her account had been hacked and they could help straighten things out. They had her download the Phantom app onto her phone, which gave them access to her pay pal account. That in turn got them access to her bank account. After the scammers told her the process to fix her account was not working, they told her to purchase Apple Gift Cards, to which she gave them the numbers off of them.

Getting suspicious, the next day she contacted her bank and was put in touch with the fraud department at the Tennessee State Bank in Sevierville who confirmed the fraud an froze her account. The bank told her to contact Apple, who found the gift cards were deposited into an Apple account in North Miami Beach. Apple then froze that accounting containing $5,000 as the funds were obtained via fraud. The woman is currently working with her bank and Apple to get her funds replaced.