Terrifying High-Tech Bank Scam Drains Your Life Savings In Seconds

Terrifying High-Tech Bank Scam Drains Your Life Savings In Seconds — and ‘devastated’ victims are sounding the alarm

Asia Grace  Mon, October 27, 2025  NY Post

Noel Phillips can’t believe he was cleaned out so quickly — and easily.

The New York millennial was bled dry earlier this year by a group of scammers who used phone number-spoofing technology — software used to misleadingly alter caller ID information — to empty his bank account, taking all of his life savings, totaling nearly $30,000.

“It’s devastating,” Phillips, 33, a journalist and an NYC transplant from London, exclusively told The Post. “I can still hear the voices of the people who called me, posing as employees of Chase Bank, claiming there had been fraudulent activity on my account.”

“They used fear tactics to basically hypnotize me into handing over all the money I’d worked so hard to earn and save over the last four years,” he added.

Deborah Moss, a 65-year-old caretaker from Northern California, was previously thunderstruck by a similar wave of devastation when an imposter targeted her, draining her Chase account of a shocking $162,000 in 2020.

“I started screaming like you wouldn’t believe,” Moss recently told The Post. “I was, like, ‘Oh, my f—king God.’ I was just hysterical. That was all my money.”

That’s the sinister trickery of business imposter scams, which have been on a steady rise, outpacing romance scams, family and friend scams and tech support scams over the past five years.

The crime now ranks as the No.1 consumer complaint of 2025, per data provided to The Post by the Federal Trade Commission.

As of late June, the FTC, which protects folks from deceptive and unjust business practices, has been inundated with over 516,000 imposter scam complaints — totaling almost $1.7 million in losses.

To get their paws on a target’s money, imposter scammers often call — or email, text or direct message — a victim, pretending to be a representative from a trusted, established company. They typically claim that there’s been some sort of privacy breach or unauthorized dealings on their account.

After spinning a falsified yarn about an alleged faux pas, the wolves in sheep’s clothing create a sense of urgency and panic about the situation, convincing their prey to hastily transfer large sums of money or divulge personal information to avoid any further malfeasance.

But in reality, they’re the bad guys, siphoning cash and info for their own greedy gain.

And imposter scammers don’t limit their villainy to masquerading as reps for financial institutions like Bank of America or TD Bank — just two of the corporations that Upper East Side granny Nina Mortellito, 86, is suing in New York state court, alleging they failed to protect her from a $700,000 con.

In August 2023, she was allegedly targeted via a pop-up window that falsely warned that her bank accounts were about to be hacked, according to a lawsuit filed earlier this month.

Over the course of nine months, Mortellito, who suffers from age-related memory issues, was allegedly convinced by fraudsters to make a series of unusual withdrawals, totaling anywhere from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, from Merrill Lynch, TD Bank and UBS accounts, according to court papers.

Although the banks were aware she was vulnerable to scammers, they didn’t raise any alarms, the lawsuit charged.

The Post has reached out to Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, TD Bank and UBS for comment.

Robert Georges, Mortellito’s attorney, told The Post he’s inundated with bank imposter fraud cases from victims plagued with “devastation, embarrassment, confusion and upset” following the violation.

“There’s this fear about how they’re going to live without their life savings,” he added. “This is a well-known epidemic in America. All the banks are aware that this is a major problem, but we don’t feel that banks are doing a reasonable job to protect people. We’re bringing these lawsuits to hopefully effect change.”

Mortellito and her lawyer are seeking unspecified damages against the banks, whom they’re suing for negligence, The Post previously reported.

In addition to impersonating bankers in the name of fraud, ne’er-do-wells also commonly pose as customer service staffers for popular retailers, delivery service couriers or utility company workers, just to name a few.

Christopher Brown, a lawyer with the FTC’s Division of Marketing Practices, calls the swindles “sophisticated” and credits the prevalence of artificial intelligence with helping fraudsters seem legitimate.

“AI can certainly amplify the scams, making them more believable,” Brown told The Post, noting the multitude of AI-powered spoofing and voice-hijacking tools available to perps. “They’re trying to gain your trust, making you believe they are who they’re claiming to be.”

The Federal Communications Commission reports that US consumers receive approximately 4 billion spoofed calls, including automated robocalls, from money-hungry scammers each month.

To combat the crisis, the FCC recently implemented its STIR/SHAKEN framework. It’s an industry-standard caller ID authentication technology that validates the legitimacy of calls, allowing the phone company of the receiver to verify that a call is, in fact, from the number displayed on the caller ID.

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