Woman receives a Zelle payment from an unknown number, then they call her, threatening to show up at her house
That was a close one
A woman says she received a Zelle payment from an unfamiliar number and suspected it was a scam. In a TikTok video, Sara (sara_reyesss) alleged she received repeated calls from an unknown number while driving to meet friends, having forgotten about the payment. She ignored the calls, then later got a text saying the sender had transferred the money by mistake and asking her to return it. When Sara couldn’t reply for a while because she was driving, the sender allegedly threatened to show up at her home. They even had her address.
Sara reportedly called the sender, who told her that after paying for certain services she had used, the woman who provided them claimed she hadn’t received the Zelle payment. The sender allegedly told the service provider that she had sent it. Sara explained how the mix-up happened: the sender had saved Sara’s number and the service provider’s number under the same name, and accidentally sent the payment to Sara instead of the provider.
When Sara checked her account, she said she noticed that the payment was still pending. She said she called her bank, and they appreciated that she hadn’t Zelled anyone any money. They explained that this could be part of a possible scam. Because the payment was pending, Sara could send the money to the person, who would receive it even though they hadn’t originally sent it.
A closure of relief
In a later video, Sara said that, contrary to her earlier belief, the woman who called was someone she knew, though they weren’t necessarily friends. She mentioned that they had met a long time ago and exchanged numbers.
Sara said that the pending payment was cleared and that she sent the woman back the money she owed. However, Sara said that regardless of the outcome, she knew scams like this were going around. She said, “They’ll, like, upload a debit card to, like, um, Cash App or one of those kind of, um, transactional apps, and accidentally send you money that’s pending, ask you for it back, and then once the bank realises that it was, um, not gonna go through or whatever, and they cancel the transaction, you’ve sent them money.”
Sara wasn’t wrong. According to Sound Credit Union, the scam Sara might have fallen victim to, had things turned out differently, is known as a money transfer scam. These schemes involve deceiving someone into transferring money or sharing private information that can be used to access their accounts.
The source also notes that these scams can take many forms and may seem authentic, such as messages, texts, or calls that appear to come from your financial institution but do not. Because the procedure is irreversible, the source says it’s “important to pause, verify the request, and make sure you know exactly who you’re sending money to before completing a transfer.”
Sara had a narrow escape.
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