Georgia retirees recover savings from bank scam

BUFORD, Ga. - A retired couple whose life savings disappeared after a phone call they thought was from their bank just had a huge development in their case. 

Police say the cyber heist took less than 20 minutes. Despite months of hearing, "Sorry, case closed,"  Gloria and Gary Moss kept pushing for investigators and the bank to realize their account had been hacked. It has paid off. 

"They asked me ‘What did I want?’ I said, ‘I want, for number one, for Chase to give me $48,259.23,’ and that is exactly what they gave us back to the penny," Gloria Moss told the FOX 5 I-Team.

For five months, the Mosses fretted and prayed over their lost life savings.

"When I first started out with this, nobody was doing nothing," Gloria Moss told the I-Team at her home.

Their money was stolen from their Chase Bank account in February. Fast-forward to April, police still hadn't assigned her case to a detective. In the meantime, a federal watchdog group said there was nothing they could do. And the bank? Case closed.

"Chase is like, 'Uh, you let'em in. Sorry,'" Gloria Moss said.

The couple sat down with the I-Team three times over the last few months as they shared updates on their story. 

"In other words, the money is gone. This is what it is, but my wife was determined, and she never gave up," Gary Moss said. 

The Buford couple explained to FOX 5 in April when we first met them how the scam started.

"I received two text messages saying they were from Chase's fraud department, that my husband's debit card had been compromised," Gloria Moss said.

She called who she thought was the bank. She says while on hold she thought the bank was canceling her cards and issuing new ones. What the caller was really doing was emptying her account.  

"If you see that money was removed from your ... accounts ... and you didn't authorize the transaction, let us know right away. We will reimburse you," Chase Bank's website reads.

The Mosses did that. But here's the rub: Chase Bank wrote that Gloria Moss either "authorized" the transaction or she benefited from the theft. Moss has always maintained she didn't authorize anything. 

Here's our exchange on this topic. Did they ask for anything like your social security number? "Oh, no," she said. Did they ask for your account number? "No." Did they ask for your password? Again, she said, "No."  Did they ask for anything like your security code answer? "No." 

It was now on the Mosses to prove that scammers had hacked her phone and communicated with the bank approving large money transfers, not her. But she couldn't get her own phone records without a subpoena.

"The problem was I couldn't prove it because I couldn't get a subpoena," she said.

She went to the Gwinnett County courthouse and asked for one. They declined, saying the police had to do it. Frustration all over their faces caught the eye of an assistant district attorney walking by. She jumped in and got their case in front of detectives. They got her phone records and there it was - the scam laid out in computer jargon that was clear to financial forensics experts.

Gary Moss remembers talking to the police about what they saw. 

"They just said they could see for a certain period of time that she was on the phone with the scammers, and when Chase was trying to call her, they were actually talking to the scammers," he recalled.

On July 10, the stolen $48,259.23 reappeared in their account.

"Chase called me and let me know that they had decided that after the review - a third-party review was what she said - the decision was to refund our money back," Gloria Moss said.

The FOX 5 I-Team asked Chase Bank what in those phone records changed their mind. The bank only offered this brief response. "We’ve credited our customers' account in full based on the new evidence they provided in response to our request for additional information."

Oh, and one more very big turn. Gwinnett County police arrested a Texas woman, Audrey Michelle Townsend, for felony theft. Police say she admitted to being part of the theft. She was the caller. The 25-year-old has been extradited to Georgia and is sitting in Gwinnett County Jail.

"It's been a long, long, long five months," said a relieved Gloria Moss.  

The key here if this happens to you is to get a copy of your phone records and get them in front of the police and the bank.