TAMPA, Fla. — A Tampa Bay area landscaping business owner narrowly avoided losing $15,000 to scammers who impersonated his bank and knew his detailed banking history in what cybersecurity experts call a "cash bag scam."
Moses Harmon, who has operated a landscaping and lawn care company for 25 years, received what appeared to be a legitimate text message from Wells Fargo earlier this month asking if he had made a $2,800 charge at a Best Buy in San Francisco.
"I was 100% sure it was them"
"Never before has a scammer been able to tell me what my banking history was. So that makes it even that more scary," Harmon said.
When Harmon replied "no" to the text, he received a phone call minutes later from someone claiming to be from Wells Fargo.
The caller read him a list of his recent legitimate banking transactions, including his mortgage payment.
"They called off 3 or 4 transactions, boom, boom, boom, and they were legitimate transactions that I had done," Harmon said.
The caller then warned that several outgoing wire transfers were scheduled to be sent from his bank account to people he didn't know.
At that moment, Harmon was completely convinced he was speaking with his bank.
"I'm thinking to myself, you know, I'm talking to the people from Wells Fargo," Harmon said. "At that moment? I was 100% sure it was them."
But it wasn't his bank at all.
Fake phone numbers, the dark web enables scammers to gain trust
Roger Grimes, who works for cybersecurity company KnowBe4, said anyone can fall victim to these sophisticated scams.
"Anybody can fake any phone number. Unfortunately, our phone system has been designed for decades to allow anybody to make any phone number appear," Grimes said.
By mimicking a customer's phone number and entering information available on the dark web, like Social Security numbers and dates of birth, scammers can use phone-based banking systems to learn account balances and recent transactions.
"The more information they can give you about you, you know, you start to feel confident, oh, it really must be this person or this thing," Grimes said.
The scammer told Harmon that someone who worked for Wells Fargo was trying to transfer and steal his money, so they needed his help.
"They said we're gonna need you to come down to the bank tomorrow, close your account, open up a new account," Harmon said.
Harmon agreed to go to a South Tampa Wells Fargo branch the next morning. The scammer called as he arrived at the bank, telling him to withdraw $15,000 in cash, inform the teller he needed it for a renovation, and bring the money to the parking lot.
"They said, we need you to keep your phone on while you're going into the bank, so we can hear everything that's said. That was the biggest red flag," Harmon said.
As Harmon approached the teller, he realized something wasn't right.
"She handed me a withdrawal slip. She said, I need you to fill that out. I turned the withdrawal slip over, and wrote on it, 'I think I'm being scammed.' I handed it to her," Harmon said.
The teller got the manager, who told Harmon to hang up.
The manager informed him that another customer had lost $10,000 days earlier in a similar scam.
Cash bag scams on the rise
"These cash bag scams where people go to the bank, get the cash, hand it or mail it to somebody, I've never heard of any of that being retrieved. It's gone forever," Grimes said.
Grimes said he was recently questioned at his own bank when he made a large withdrawal.
"The bank manager came up to me and said I'm sorry, I just want to make sure you're not being scammed. We stop 2 to 3 a day," Grimes said. "So imagine that one bank branch is stopping 2 to 3 of these what I call cash bag scams a day and multiply that by the many tens of thousands of bank branches we have."
There are currently about 70,000 bank branches in the United States.
According to the FBI's 2024 Internet Crime Report, overall reported scams were up 33% in 2024, resulting in $16.6 billion in losses.
"I bet it's tens of thousands of people a day that are being scammed this way," Grimes said. "They wouldn't be opening these call centers if they didn't make money. To them it's a full-time business."
Wells Fargo declined an on-camera interview but referred inquiries to the Florida Bankers Association.
"This is organized crime now. This is not individual one-off scammers, criminals," said Kathy Kraninger, president of the Florida Bankers Association.
Kraninger said Florida banks spend significant money educating consumers and training employees to recognize and prevent scams, but bankers often have to walk a fine line.
"It's your money, so you have the ability to do what you want to do with your money. And so it is a challenging thing. That's exactly what the banks are training their personnel to deal with," Kraninger said.
Kraninger believes the number of cash bag scams is under-reported because many victims are embarrassed.
"I just think we need to be sharing information because there's so much crazy stuff going on out there," Harmon said.
Grimes offers this advice: "If you get an unexpected message, a phone call, an email, a text message, you weren't expecting it, so it comes to you. And it's asking you to do something you've never done before. That's a high-risk message. And at that point, especially if it has a sense of urgency about it, slow down and start to do research."
Harmon said he's glad he slowed down before it was too late.
"It was too hard to get the money in there than to just walk in there and get it and bring it out to somebody," Harmon said.
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Adam Walser has spent more than a decade fighting for what’s right in Tampa Bay as part of the I-Team. He’s helped expose flaws in Florida’s eldercare system and held leaders accountable for how they use your tax dollars. Reach out to Adam with any issue you think he needs to investigate.
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