After posting an iPhone on Craigslist, a Gallatin woman received numerous messages of interest, but found out that many of the messages were from scammers.
According to Christina Pedigo, who was selling the iPhone, one of the scammers attempted to scam her over the phone in a way that Verizon had never heard before.
Pedigo said the messages she received from potential buyers made her cautious from the start.
“A lot of these messages were in broken English.” Pedigo explained.
One of the potential buyers asked if they could call Pedigo about the phone, which seemed innocent enough, but then the buyer sent Pedigo a message asking her to enter a two-digit code when they called so they could hear Pedigo’s voice.
“It just seemed a little bit weird, a little bit suspicious.” Pedigo recalled. “I thought, I don’t think I want to answer that just yet, I need more information before I’m going to just answer a phone and punch in a code.”
Pedigo called her cell phone provider, Verizon, and asked about the activation code. That’s when Verizon told Pedigo that they hadn’t heard of anything like this before, and they told her she did the right thing by not picking up and entering in the two-digit code.
“It was most likely a way for the person to gain remote access into my phone.” Pedigo said of the scam.
Due to this being a more recent scam with few instances, Pedigo hoped her story could help warn others to avoid this scam.
“Follow your instincts. If your instincts are telling you something is wrong, something is probably wrong.”
