A 32-year-old Florida woman was saving to buy a house. Scammers posing as Chase Bank convinced her to hand over $50,000 instead

The 32-year-old from Plant City, Florida, had been setting money aside for her own home. “I wanted to buy a house, you know, start making my own family. Yeah, that was the plan,” she told WFLA.

On the morning of July 9, people posing as Chase — the U.S. consumer and commercial banking business of JPMorgan Chase & Co. — talked her out of more than $50,000 of it.

How a morning phone call cost her more than $50,000

“Around 9:19 I received a phone call, stating that some fraudulent account transactions had been going through my account,” Ponce told WFLA. “They gave me the bank account information to link their account to mine on my phone.”

The story they told her was that both her personal and business accounts were compromised, and she needed to move the money somewhere safe — into an account they provided. She sent $4,524.13 from her personal account through Cash App first. And then, they asked for something bigger.

“They told me I had to take out all the money that I had in my business account, and that’s around $45,000, so I did,” Ponce said. That withdrawal came to $45,803. The two transfers together were more than $50,000.

The scammers pushed for one more — a $25,000 wire — before backing off and sending her an email stamped with the Chase logo to cancel the request.

How common this scam has become

Imposter scams were the most commonly reported fraud in the U.S. in 2025 — nearly one in three fraud reports — and people reported losing $3.5 billion to them, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Business impersonators took nearly $1 billion of that, and within that group, the highest losses were from criminals pretending to be a bank.

The FTC describes the same sequence Ponce lived through. These scams tend to start with an alarming message about your account, then steer you into moving your savings somewhere you’re told is safe.

That’s what makes it work. The victim believes she’s protecting her money at the very moment she’s losing it.

Why the money is so hard to get back

The money is hard to get back because Ponce moved it herself. A payment you’re tricked into approving doesn’t carry the same protection as an unauthorized charge on your card — Chase’s own guidance says recovering money you willingly sent is unlikely even if you were tricked into it.

After she realized what happened, Ponce reported it to law enforcement, who told her to ask Chase to place a hold on the account. She says the bank told her it couldn’t — “Because it wasn’t my account.”

Chase says its staff tried to warn her. “We confirmed that our branch employees asked this customer multiple questions before the transaction, including the purpose of the transaction, and attempted to educate her about potential scams,” the bank said. “Our bankers are trained to spot scams, and we urge customers to be truthful so they can help protect them.”

But Ponce says they didn’t. “They did not tell me anything, they just let me withdraw the money,” she said.