Woman Warns of ‘Intricate’ Identify Theft Scam That Led to Her Losing Life Savings: ‘Everything Checked Out’ 

A Nashville woman’s savings account was depleted after she says she was scammed by someone posing as a border patrol agent.

Speaking with WKRN-TV, Rachel Smith says an individual claiming to be a female officer with the Department of Homeland Security working out of El Paso, Texas, convinced her to surrender her life savings.

“She said there was a package seized that was coming from my name and address and inside it had documents and narcotics,” Smith explained, according to the station. “They had all of my information - my social, my address, my birth date.”

Smith said she confirmed the identity of the caller through social media. 

“Artificial intelligence is so scary now because they made online profiles for these people. Everything checked out,” she said.

The scammer then instructed Smith to withdraw $10,000 at a time and deposit it into Bitcoin machines to keep her money safe.

On Thursday, “she said I have turned in all of your files and everything has been approved. You will get a phone call from a DEA officer by 11 a.m., tomorrow on where you need to meet them so you can pick up the check,” said Smith, per WKRN.

Instead, a phone call from her bank alerted her she was scammed after an unknown individual tried accessing her account.

“At first, I felt stupid," Smith confessed. "I’m a very intellectual person. I thought, ‘How could this happen to me?’”

She reported the scam to the FBI, who Smith said is unable to recover her money. Now, she’s warning others to prevent them from similarly falling victim, the station reports. 

Smith said, “Between my background in finance, and my mom’s [background] in investigation, I was just appalled at how intricate this was, and I wanted to tell my story because I don’t want it to happen to anybody else.”