Wei Shen says up until earlier this year, retirement was within reach.
“I wanted to retire next year, 2023,” she said. “When I’m 65.”
She had saved well over $68,000 — it’s money she was counting on to make that retirement possible. But she said that money is now gone.
“It has been very, very difficult because it changing [sic] my life,” she said.
It all happened within a few hours on March 24, after Wei said her cellphone suddenly went silent.
“Phone was so quiet,” she said. “No vibration, nothing at all.”
She couldn’t make or receive calls. So she eventually went to a T-Mobile store, where she learned her SIM card was no longer working.
“And then they switched it to a new one and it start working,” she said.
Wei, the apparent victim of a SIM swap scam, soon realized someone had transferred tens of thousands of dollars out of her Citibank accounts.
“Somehow … the money all went out,” she said.
SIM swap scams involve fraudsters posing as the victim and getting the cellphone carrier to transfer the victim’s SIM card to a different phone. Once that happens, they can reset the victim’s passwords and gain access to their accounts.
Records Wei shared with NBC 6 show three separate wire transfers happening on the same day her phone stopped working. Those transactions totaled $68,625, draining her bank accounts. She said she called Citibank right away and reported the fraud.
Weeks later, Wei received…
