CBS News correspondent Matt Gutman says he came dangerously close to falling for a highly sophisticated phone scam — one so persuasive that he nearly went to his bank and withdrew all the money in his account before realizing something was wrong.
In a video posted Friday to his X account, Gutman described getting a call from a woman who claimed to be with his bank’s “fraud protection” team.
According to Gutman, the caller gave her name, supplied what sounded like an official badge number and seemed to know specific details about his banking information.
“They seemed to know so much about me, about my bank account,” Gutman said. He recalled the caller telling him, “‘Listen, we suspect that there is significant fraud activity at the bank branch where you bank, and what we need you to do right now–.’ We went through all the accounts, and we actually had some suspicious activity recently in my daughter’s account.”
The call became even more unsettling when the woman described what she presented as a strategy to help expose the supposed criminals.
“She gave me the names and then she said, ‘What we need you to do, in order to intercept these fraudsters, is to go into the bank and withdraw everything from your bank account’ — which wasn’t that much money at this point — ‘and take it with you so you have it in cash and that’ll trigger the fraudsters into action. That’s how we’ll be able to catch them.’ I thought, OK, that’s a little weird.”
Gutman said the request immediately struck him as suspicious. “Why would you use a regular citizen for something that seems like a law enforcement issue? But I said, you know, OK, and I went in there and she said, ‘But you can’t tell anybody at the bank that this is happening because they might be in on it,’” he continued.
That instruction, Gutman said, was the moment the warning signs became impossible to ignore.
Gutman said the demand to keep bank employees in the dark made him realize he was dealing with scammers, despite how authentic the call had seemed.
“You’ve got to be so careful,” Gutman said, “and some of these scams are incredibly sophisticated with people who clearly know what they are talking about, and speak like they are in the profession. I’m just blown away by how good that person was. I can’t get over this.”
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Gutman’s close call comes just months after another veteran TV journalist became the victim of a costly fraud scheme.
Former KSEE 24 news anchor Alex Delgado told Your Central Valley she lost $72,000 after being targeted by scammers.
“I feel dumb, that I should have been smarter about it. I am in a very vulnerable place,” Delgado said.
According to the report, Delgado received a suspicious text in March that appeared to come from the stock trading app Robinhood.
The message claimed there had been suspicious activity on her account and instructed her to call a phone number to report the issue.
The cases underscore how increasingly sophisticated digital scams have become, with fraudsters using convincing scripts and personal information to gain victims’ trust before attempting to steal their money.
Both the US federal government and the California State Legislature have enacted laws aimed at investigating, prosecuting and disrupting cyber-scam networks.
