A CBS journalist who covers scams rushed his to his bank to withdraw money after nearly falling for an imposter scam
A CBS journalist who covers scams rushed his to his bank to withdraw money after nearly falling for an imposter scam.
In 2025, victims lost $3.5 billion (1) to imposter scams. Now, CBS News chief correspondent Matt Gutman nearly became a victim of one of those scams.
"I just got SCAMMED," Matt Gutman posted in a video on X (2) on July 10.
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Gutman explained that "fraud protection" at his bank called and told him that people were illegally withdrawing money from his account. Despite thinking of himself as "savvy," Gutman said he nearly fell for the scam , getting as far as going to the local branch and starting the process of withdrawing funds before he thought twice.
Here's what happened to Gutman, how he ultimately realized he was being scammed and some tips from experts on how to avoid these tricks when even the professionals are falling for them.
Gutman's first contact with the scammers was a call from someone with a name, badge ID and insider knowledge of his bank account.
"They said, 'We suspect that there is significant fraud activity at the bank branch where you bank,'" Gutman said on X. The caller told him there were fraudsters at the bank and he had to help catch them by going to his local branch and withdrawing funds in cash to prompt the scammers to act. He was also told he couldn't tell anyone at his bank, as they may be in on it.
Gutman was convinced by the caller's knowledge of his account, plus the fact that there had been recent fraudulent activity on his daughter's account. He visited the bank, went to the teller and started withdrawing his funds.
Fortunately, one thought entered his mind that caused him to realize he'd been scammed and walk away.
He realized, "There is no way that this is possibly real. That anyone would use a regular civilian for a sting operation at a bank." Thankfully, he had this thought before it was too late and was able to walk away with no harm done. However, he said the scary thing was that he found out the scammers do this often and then rob the person who withdrew the money.
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While Gutman was lucky he didn't lose any funds, he now believes anyone could fall for the tactics used by the scam callers. "Beware. These people are out there and they are good," he said on X.
The data backs this up. Reported losses from imposter scams (1) are three times greater than in 2020 and close to 1 in 3 reports of fraud made to the FTC involve this type of scam . Both new tactics and new technology are big reasons for the change.
"Traditional phone scams typically involved contacting large numbers of individuals with generic narratives," Joshua Copeland (3), a professor teaching cybersecurity at Tulane University, told MoneyWise. "Contemporary scams are increasingly personalized."
Copeland explained that in Gutman's case, "the caller demonstrated knowledge of account details, and connected the narrative to legitimate suspicious activity." These tactics made Gutman believe there was a credible threat, while warnings about insiders isolated him.
It was "a deliberately orchestrated social-engineering operation rather than a random call," Copeland said. He also warned that scammers get this information from social media, public records and data breaches, then use caller-ID spoofing to bolster credibility. Ricardo Amper, (4) founder of Incode Technologies, an identity protection platform, agrees.
