This Twitch Streamer Was Scammed Out Of Thousands Of Dollars
It's no secret that scammers these days are pretty advanced — text messages and emails can look 100% legit. Unfortunately, one streamer found that out the hard way. NRG Lulu, who's part of the group that just solved the case of missing streamers Hamlinz and Daequan and that clowned on the esports exam, woke up Thursday morning to a scam that almost cost her $5,000.
Lulu went over everything that happened on stream. Everything started with a text message "warning" Lulu that someone was trying to send themselves $5,000 from her Zelle account. She messaged back that it wasn't her, and the scammer — still posing as her bank — told her to expect a phone call from its fraud department.
Lulu answered the fake fraud worker, explaining the situation and following their instructions. Essentially, the scammer wanted her to "send herself" $5,000 to secure the funds. Unfortunately, Lulu still trusted the person on the phone and gave them a security code that Wells Fargo had sent her.
Once that happened, she realized that she had made a mistake as she received a new Zelle account creation email from Wells Fargo. She immediately hung up the phone to stop anything from progressing, but that wasn't enough to solve the problem.
The scammer locked Lulu out of her bank accounts
Lulu tried to access her bank account with Chase to see what had happened when she realized that she was locked out of her account. At the same time, the scammers blew her phone up with back-to-back calls. At the same time, she was getting constant emails from Wells Fargo about the account that the scammer created.
The streamer called Chase to get help, and she even called Wells Fargo despite the fact that she wasn't a customer with them. Lulu also mentioned that she had to call Zelle to get help as well.
All in all, it took Lulu five hours to get everything sorted. Luckily, she didn't end up losing any of the money that the scammer tried to take.
Lulu explained that she thinks that she fell for the scam because her debit card's information was stolen just a few weeks ago. That, combined with the fact that she just woke up, disoriented Lulu. The streamer eventually came to the conclusion that an actual person trying to steal from her Zelle account to begin with, and that the bank was never actually involved.
While nothing actually happened, it's still a stressful situation for anyone to deal with. Lulu's situation serves as a reminder to always call your bank if you ever get fraud notifications, because many ridiculous scams and hoaxes actually work.