Andy Cohen has spoken out about a time when he got scammed, which resulted in him losing “a lot of money”.
The 55-year-old TV host spoke candidly about the experience during an episode of his podcast, Andy Cohen’s Daddy Diaries, which aired on 22 December.
Speaking with his podcast co-host, John Hill, Cohen revealed that he recently got scammed. While noting that he didn’t want to go “too deeply into what happened”, he started by explaining that he got a call from someone saying they “were fraud alert from [his] bank,” which led to the scam.
He then noted that before the call, he had put in a request for a new bank card. “I did lose a card, and I put in for it, and I got an email saying, ‘There might be fraud on your account,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, this is attached to the card I lost,’” he said.
According to the radio host, he then logged into his bank account, which is when he was asked for “[his] Apple ID and password”. Although he realised this was a bad sign and “bailed” from the web page, he later felt like that led to him being scammed.
“I had already logged into my bank app,” he said. “I think somehow my logging through whatever this site was gave them access to my bank app.”
Cohen continued to note that when he got that call, it “came up on [his] phone as the name of the bank”. He then detailed how he answered the phone call, which ended up leading to the scam.
“They’re like ‘it’s fraud alert,’ whatever, and I go: ‘Yes, we need to talk,’” he said. “And then they were naming credits that I had made, charges, because they clearly had access to my account.”
The Real Housewives host shared that as the person on the phone was naming charges, he’d say: “Yes, these are real charges.” However, he said he had regrets for how he handled the situation, before revealing how long he ended up staying on the phone with the woman.
“What I should have done is say, ‘Can I call you back?’ or ‘Can I go to the bank and handle this?’” he explained to his co-host. “Instead, John, I stayed on the line with this woman for an hour and 10 minutes.”
After explaining that he was mainly “going through charges,” he said there was one point where the woman on the phone made a different request.
“She was like, ‘I need you to enter into your phone these numbers,’” he recalled. “I went to the keypad, and I entered a bunch of numbers that she told me to enter. And what came onto my screen was this screen that basically said…I had set up call forwarding and message forwarding on my phone.”
He said that when he learned that the call forwarding feature was set up, he took a screenshot of it and told the woman on the phone. However, according to Cohen, the woman told him: “Oh, ignore that.”
From there, he said that the woman continued to tell him about all these charges on his card, which he said he didn’t make. “She’s like, ‘Someone is trying to place a charge on your card at a Walmart in Minneapolis. Do you know this person?’ I said no. She said, ‘Do you want us to prosecute?’” he added.
He then explained that when he talked to his bank about the experience, they told him they never ask cardholders if they want to prosecute scammers, they “just do”.
Cohen segwayed back to recalling the conversation with the woman, noting that she not only said she’d “send a new card”, but that she “really sounded like [she] was helping him”. He noted that he then told him she “had a few more things to do” and would call him back “in 30 minutes”. However, according to Cohen, he never received a call from her.
From there, he contacted a fraud alert about the situation, during which he was asked for his debit card number. However, Cohen said he didn’t have that number because his “card was gone”. The saga continued with the TV host then realising how he was being scammed.
“[Fraud alert] said, ‘We will put you in a queue and call you back.’ What I didn’t realise was that all of my calls were being forwarded to that other scammer,” he said, before noting how he went to his bank after receiving messages about his account.
He then revealed how he learned he lost money from the scam, adding: “I go to the bank the next day, and these people wired out of two accounts that I have a lot of money.”
According to Cohen, while the bank had called him to ask if the wires were done by the fraudsters, he didn’t actually get those calls. “Since I had set up call forwarding, the calls went to the scam artists,” he concluded. “And they confirmed the wires.”
He added that after he reset his passwords for everything and began the process of getting his money back, he went to “call forwarding” and saw the number that all his “calls were being forwarded to”.
The Radio Andy host then gave his advice to listeners who are in a similar situation and are worried that they are being scammed.
“Part of my advice for people is that if something is happening, just go to your bank branch,” he said. “And when you get emails, look very closely at the email address. It might say your bank’s name, but click on the name, and then the email address will appear, and you’ll see that it’s some other random address.”
