‘Scary experience’: CBS journalist Matt Gutman said he was ‘completely scammed’ after falling for fraud phone call

(Gray News) - CBS News journalist Matt Gutman revealed that he almost withdrew thousands of dollars in savings after falling for a phone scam in Los Angeles.

In a video posted on X, Gutman said he came very close to emptying his account after he received a phone call from someone claiming to be from the fraud protection department at his bank.

Gutman explained that the caller shared a name and a badge ID before saying someone was trying to illegally pull money from his bank account. He admitted that he spent “over an hour” on the phone with the fraudster.

“They seemed to know so much about me, about my bank account,” said Gutman. “And then they said, ‘Listen, we suspect that there is significant fraud activity at the bank branch where you bank.’”

He said in the clip that they went through all of the accounts and actually had some suspicious activity recently in his daughter’s account.

“Then she said, ‘What we need you to do in order to intercept these fraudsters is to go into the bank and withdraw everything from your bank account,’” which he said wasn’t that much money at this point.

By withdrawing the cash, the caller said, “That will trigger the fraudsters into action. That’s how we will be able to catch them.”

Gutman started to catch on and thought the plan was “a little weird,” but still went to his local bank.

But the caller also warned that he should not explain to the tellers what he was doing because there were allegedly two fraudsters at the bank.

“So I go to the teller and I start doing the thing and I’m like, there is no way this is possibly real, that anybody would use a regular civilian for a sting operation at a bank,” he said.

The final instruction from the woman set off alarm bells and he realized the call was not real.

“The most scary and the dangerous part is that I would have been walking around with thousands of dollars in cash at a place known to those scammers because they directed me to my local bank branch,” he said. “And I was told that this happens all the time. And then they either rob your car or they rob you.”

He described the ordeal as a “very scary experience” and told others to be careful even if they consider themselves savvy.