‘I can’t get over this’: A CBS journalist who reports on scams nearly became a victim himself. Here's how he spotted it before it was too late

Gutman explained that “fraud protection” at his bank called and told him that people were illegally withdrawing money from his account. Despite thinking of himself as “savvy,” Gutman said he nearly fell for the scam, getting as far as going to the local branch and starting the process of withdrawing funds before he thought twice.

Here’s what happened to Gutman, how he ultimately realized he was being scammed and some tips from experts on how to avoid these tricks when even the professionals are falling for them.

CBS News chief correspondent nearly falls for imposter scam — but this realization saved him

Gutman’s first contact with the scammers was a call from someone with a name, badge ID and insider knowledge of his bank account.

“They said, ‘We suspect that there is significant fraud activity at the bank branch where you bank,’” Gutman said on X. The caller told him there were fraudsters at the bank and he had to help catch them by going to his local branch and withdrawing funds in cash to prompt the scammers to act. He was also told he couldn’t tell anyone at his bank, as they may be in on it.

Gutman was convinced by the caller’s knowledge of his account, plus the fact that there had been recent fraudulent activity on his daughter’s account. He visited the bank, went to the teller and started withdrawing his funds.

Fortunately, one thought entered his mind that caused him to realize he’d been scammed and walk away.

He realized, “There is no way that this is possibly real. That anyone would use a regular civilian for a sting operation at a bank.” Thankfully, he had this thought before it was too late and was able to walk away with no harm done. However, he said the scary thing was that he found out the scammers do this often and then rob the person who withdrew the money.

Phone scams can trap even the savvy

While Gutman was lucky he didn’t lose any funds, he now believes anyone could fall for the tactics used by the scam callers. “Beware. These people are out there and they are good,” he said on X.

The data backs this up. Reported losses from imposter scams are three times greater than in 2020 and close to 1 in 3 reports of fraud made to the FTC involve this type of scam. Both new tactics and new technology are big reasons for the change.

“Traditional phone scams typically involved contacting large numbers of individuals with generic narratives,“ Joshua Copeland, a professor teaching cybersecurity at Tulane University, told MoneyWise. “Contemporary scams are increasingly personalized.”

Copeland explained that in Gutman’s case, “the caller demonstrated knowledge of account details, and connected the narrative to legitimate suspicious activity.” These tactics made Gutman believe there was a credible threat, while warnings about insiders isolated him.

It was “a deliberately orchestrated social-engineering operation rather than a random call,” Copeland said. He also warned that scammers get this information from social media, public records and data breaches, then use caller-ID spoofing to bolster credibility. Ricardo Amper, founder of Incode Technologies, an identity protection platform, agrees.

“Between data breaches and what people share publicly on social media, information like where you bank is often just sitting out there,” Amper told MoneyWise, warning that scammers use AI to gather this data on thousands of potential victims and create personalized scripts. “The result is scams that are exponentially better than they were even two or three years ago,” he said.

How to protect yourself

Of course, better scammers aren’t what people hoped for from AI. But, there are still ways to protect yourself.