Speaking on the latest episode of his “Daddy Diaries” podcast, Cohen detailed his experience falling victim to a banking fraud.
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According to him, the scammers had access to his bank information and knew all of his recent transactions, which made the hoax seem too real to him.
However, he’s learnt his lesson and he’s decided to share his experience so that others can learn from it.
Andy Cohen Details Moment He Lost A Large Sum of Money To Fraudsters Because He Lost His Card
It may seem weird to you that someone in this time and age would fall for bank fraud after all the warnings and safety guidelines already available, but Cohen has his reasons.
You see, when the scammers called him, he’d just recently lost a card, and it was natural for him to think the bank called to make inquiries on that head.
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“I had gotten an email on Sunday because I did lose a card, and I put in for it, and I got an email being like, ‘There might be fraud on your account. And I was like, ‘Oh, this is attached to the card I lost,” Cohen said on the podcast.
Believing that he was talking to a rep from his bank, Cohen speedily signed into his bank account. It wasn’t until the fraudsters asked for his Apple ID that he realized something was terribly amiss. By that time though, it was already too late.
“And I was like, okay, this never happens, so I bailed out,” the “Watch What Happens Live” host, 55, said. “But I had already logged into my bank app, and I think somehow, my logging in through whatever this site was gave them access to my bank app,” Cohen said.
After this strange interaction, he received a call from a source whose caller ID matched that of his bank.
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Taking it that the bank has finally reached out to him to warn him about the earlier attempted hacking, he answered. Unbeknownst to him at the time, it was still those same fraudsters with a disguised caller ID.
“They were naming credits that I had made — charges — because they clearly had access to my account,” Cohen said, adding that he “stayed on the line with this woman for an hour and 10 minutes.”
They also fooled him into exchanging calls and messages with the fraudsters, thereby cutting off any avenue his bank could have used to alert him as to the money transfers from his accounts.
Instead, the calls were directed to the fraudsters, who confirmed the wires, enabling the transfer to go through. “These people wired, out of two accounts that I have, a lot of money,” he revealed.
Andy Cohen On the Lessons He Learnt From Bank Fraud
At the moment, Cohen is still in the process of recovering his money. Nevertheless, he’s using his experience to equip people with the knowledge they need to avoid falling prey to the same thing he did.
“So, I think part of my advice for people is: If you feel something is happening, just go to your bank branch,” Cohen said. “And when you get emails, look very closely at the email address they’re coming from. It might say your bank’s name, but click on the name, and then the email address will come up, and you’ll see that it’s some other random address.”
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