SPOKANE, Wash – After sending a package, Leoni Hartsfield says she received a text message alleging to be USPS saying her package could not be delivered. She followed the link, which charged a fee to change the address.
After filling out her information, she immediately went to the post office, where they said, “They don’t send out texts. So that’s when I started to panic a little bit,” said Hartsfield.
Two days later, she says she received a message from her bank that her e-mail and phone number linked to her account had been changed, and even worse, her account was overdrawn, “You don’t know what’s going on. You feel so out of control.”
Hartsfield says the scam stole close to $700.
“$700 for me is a month’s worth of medication. $700 to me is a doctor visit; $700 to me is groceries.”
According to the United States Postal Inspection Service website, USPS does not send text or e-mails without a customer first requesting the service with a tracking number, and it will not contain a link.
Hartsfield says she has filed a Crime Check report and that she has contacted her bank every day since the incident. Although she says her bank is investigating the incident, she claims there is no guarantee she will get that money back, and she is already feeling the hit, “everything is so expensive, and everything is just you know, all of us live almost pay to paycheck to paycheck and you know every dime counts.”
