Jonas Leonard says he was trying to send money to a friend but it cost him more than he planned. He says he accidentally sent money to the wrong account but lost more trying to fix what happened.
“I say I have to get my money back, the best way to get my money back is by calling customer service” Leonard said.
He called a customer service number he found online and says he thought he was speaking with a Cash App representative. He says the person on the phone asked him to download another app so they could access his phone remotely, and they did. Within minutes, more the $400 was gone from his bank account.
“It’s frustrating because we all work to get money then look at your bank account and someone took money,” Leonard said.
We didn’t have to go far to find someone else with a similar issue. Jorge Carballo, President and General Manager of Telemundo 51, also found himself needing help from Cash App customer service.
“When it disappears it is very difficult to recover,” Carballo said.
He says $500 his son sent him was in his Cash App account one minute and gone the next. He says he then discovered another $400 was missing from his bank account. He called what he thought was a Cash App customer service number he found online.
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“He wanted me to install an app to be able to get into my phone and I said, ‘No, thank you',” Carballo told us.
That number both men found online is fraudulent, according to a representative with Square, Cash App’s parent company.
When we called the phone number Leonard found online, we told the person on the phone we were with NBC 6 and were given permission to record the phone call. The person identified himself as a Cash App representative.
He even told us the money Leonard lost could just be a part of a verification process and he could help get his money back.
A Square Spokesperson told us in a statement “We are always working to protect our customers, which includes educating them about phishing scams. We remind customers that currently the Cash App team generally communicates via email; the email will come from a cash.app, square.com, or squareup.com address: and the Cash App team will never solicit a customer’s PIN or sign in code outside of the app.”
Square agreed to look into both Leonard’s and Carballo’s complaints and within days the initial amounts they had issues with were back in their Cash App accounts. The money taken directly from their bank accounts is still missing.
“Those scammers are there and they take more money from you,” said Carballo.
Both users have reached out to their banks to dispute the additional money that was taken from their accounts.