Single Houston-area mom falls victim to Zelle scam, loses nearly $8,000

SPRING BRANCH – Millions of people use Zelle, the money transfer service, to send money electronically instead of using cash or checks. Many individuals have Zelle accounts through major banks like Chase or Bank of America.

However, imagine the distress if your Zelle account was hacked and thousands of dollars started disappearing from your bank account.

• Second victim comes forward: Cyber thieves drain $4,500 from Chase Bank account via Zelle
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Unfortunately, this nightmare became a reality for a single mom from Spring Branch, who has already lost nearly $8,000. Despite reporting the fraud in December, she has received no assistance in recovering the funds.

Cindy Little received an alert on Dec. 26, the day after Christmas, notifying her that an unknown recipient had been added to her Zelle account. Already, $1,000 had been withdrawn without her knowledge. Fortunately, Chase Bank acknowledged the fraud and returned the money promptly.

“I got an alert on my phone that I added a recipient on Zelle that I did not add,” Cindy explained. “I said I don’t know who this person is, they’d already taken $1,000 out of my account, and Chase said, ‘Yes, this is fraud, we’ll give you the money back.’”

A month later, the situation repeated itself.

Cindy received a text message stating that she had approved a transaction to an unfamiliar individual.

“I went on my Chase account and they’d already taken a thousand dollars, same thing, same routine. I called Chase, I don’t know who this person is, please lock down my account and make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Cindy said.

Over the next three days, the scam artists continuously hacked Cindy’s Zelle account. They managed to withdraw $1,500, followed by $5,400, and then an additional $1,000, totaling $7,900. Shockingly, all of these transactions occurred after Cindy had already reported the fraudulent activity.

“So within three days, there were seven transactions, six of which were after I had already reported it as fraud,” she explained.

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Cindy filed a criminal case with the Houston Police Department and lodged complaints with the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission. However, Chase Bank rejected her claim, accusing her of orchestrating the scam herself and denying any fraud had taken place.

“Finally, at one point they said, ‘You probably should just admit that this was you that did this,’” Cindy said.

Coleman Ryan, a cyber detective with Kgriff Investigations, specializes in cybercrimes and has worked with KPRC 2 Investigates several times.

Coleman advised everyone to protect themselves from Zelle fraudsters by enabling two-step verification or multifactor verification.

“It’s called 2-step verification or multifactor verification, and it’s the one factor that changes every time you make a transaction. It’s never the same. When you try to send money to someone, it forces you to verify that it’s you by sending a verification code to your phone by text. If you don’t send that code back and verify, then you can’t do anything. It’s never the same and that means if someone gets your username or your password, they still are not going to be able to get into your account and steal money,” Ryan explained.

Now, KPRC 2′s Bill Spencer has taken up Cindy’s case and reached out to Chase officials to investigate further. Hopefully, there will be positive developments in the coming days, bringing some relief to Cindy’s distressing situation.