DINWIDDIE COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — A Dinwiddie County woman is speaking out to warn others after she said she was scammed out of over $11,000 dollars.
67-year-old Willette Gillenwater said it all started on Thursday, when she was online trying to find the phone number for the Social Security Office in Petersburg.
“I didn’t go to ‘ssa.gov’, I actually went to [a] ‘Social Security Administration Petersburg’ [website],” Gillenwater said. “It had ‘see more’ and as soon as I hit the ‘see more’ button, a flash came up, it blocked my screen from Microsoft, saying that my computer [was] locked. Then I had to call this number on the bottom of the screen.”
Gillenwater said she ended up calling the number that was listed at the bottom of the screen thinking it was Microsoft support. The person on the other line told her that her computer, her WiFi and even her bank account had been hacked.
“They asked me to hit the Microsoft window and ‘R’ and I punched in three letters, and of course, it gave them access to my computer screen,” Gillenwater said. “So, they went in and started running scans on all of my files, over 2 million files. And then, [the person] proceeds to tell me that [hackers] were trying to take money from my checking and my savings and that I really needed to get in touch with my bank.”
She said the person on the other line told her that someone was trying to take money directly from her account and that she needed to get in touch with her bank but that they could just connect her call directly to them.
“He said, ‘Go ahead and I’ll connect you to them,’” Gillenwater said. “Well, we got cut off, and then he called me back and he tried it again. So, it supposedly connected me to my bank in Richmond. And I spoke to a gentleman named Larry. I asked questions before he even started answering questions. And I said, first thing is who do you work for? And he told me Virginia Credit Union.”
She said the man claiming to be from her bank told her she needed to withdraw over $11,000 dollars to protect it from the hackers and deposit it into another ATM, which she did.
“I thought I was doing the right thing, and the whole time I was just playing right into their hands,” Gillenwater said. “They were so professional when they did this, so professional.”
Gillenwater said the same person called her later in the day and told her she now needed to deposit $30,000 dollars.
When she went to withdraw the money from her bank, she said a worker who knew her questioned why she wanted such a large amount and that’s when the scam started to unravel, and she realized she’d been victimized.
She said she filed a police report and is speaking out with hopes to warn others about her experience.
“I just hope that nobody else has this happen to them, it’s devastating,” Gillenwater said. “I’ve had to change accounts, I had to change my phone. I had to have my computer completely wiped out,”
Security expert and president of M7 Solutions, Cliff Lent, warns that these types of scams are becoming all too common and it’s important to know what to do to avoid them.
“[Scammers] will work as a team to convince you that they are legitimate, and they’re very good at what they do,” Lent said. “So, when there’s ever any doubt, always hang up the phone, exit out of the website that you’re on and go independently to the company or to the website that you know to be legitimate.”
