A woman was flying from New York to Washington state when she received a text from an unknown number. The sender said he was her father, needed her help, and mentioned a childhood memory to confirm it was really him.
TikTok creator Jana, who is a lawyer, initially thought her father might be in serious legal trouble. According to her storytime video, her father had spent three weeks dealing with people posing as FBI agents. He had reportedly gathered $300,000 to pay what he believed was bond and planned to carry the money to Washington, D.C. As she tells it, the money never left his hands.
Before getting into the scam, Jana explains her relationship with her father. She says her parents are divorced, and her mother carried most of the cost of raising three children. Of her father, she says, “He’s not like a monster of a person.” She adds, “We just, we just don’t vibe.”
Her dad had spent three weeks talking to the fake FBI
The text included the line “It’s truly me.” It also mentioned “towel rides,” a childhood game. Her dad used to wrap her and her brothers in towels and drag them across the floor. That convinced her. Since she couldn’t call from the plane, she asked him to explain everything over email and warned him that attorney-client privilege didn’t apply. “I’m not your lawyer. I’m a lawyer.”
@janarosejana This might not be funny for anyone but me but I’m feeling CHATTY so lock in while I tell you about the time I had to convince my dad not to book a flight to DC to hand deliver FBI Agent Gumpert a check for $300,000. #grwm #storytime #scam #familydrama #longstory
♬ original sound – Jana
About 50 minutes later, a very long email arrived with roughly 15 attachments. He wrote that it began three weeks earlier with a call about a blocked online purchase. The caller claimed to be from American Express and transferred him to someone claiming to be with the FBI.
He was told the purchase was linked to a money-laundering network. He says he then joined Zoom calls, reported his location every three hours, and signed a confidentiality agreement. Another woman previously described being drawn into what she believed was an FBI investigation, only to later realize she had allegedly been scammed.
He started having doubts when he asked to hand-deliver the $300,000. He wrote, “I did not want to transfer the $300,000 electronically.” He says the supposed agents became “extremely unorganized” and could not say where he should go. Either he was resisting the real FBI, or this was “the most elaborate cyber identity theft in history.”
Jana asked her partner, who was sitting beside her, to search whether the FBI conducts interviews over Zoom. He reported back that “the FBI never zooms.” The video does not cite an official source for that. Jana then told her father it was a scam, but he didn’t immediately accept her explanation. Another man faced a similar problem after discovering his mother had allegedly fallen for a $50,000 romance scam. Jana told her father to block the numbers and put the money back in the bank.
For Jana, finding out her father could get $300,000 together came with some irony. She says, “It’s only funny because it’s my dad.” She adds that she would not find a scam funny if it hit someone else’s family.
Commenters had very different reactions to the story. One wrote, “Send him a bill for your time. $300k sounds about right lolololol.” Another wrote, “this is funny but also soo sad i can read the panic in his email!!”
A third commenter wrote, “Look into getting a conservatorship,” describing it as “a legal arrangement where a judge appoints a person or organization to manage the personal or financial affairs of someone who is unable to care for themselves due to age, illness, or disability.” Nothing in the video suggests Jana plans to pursue one.
