St. Helena man was too smart for this phone scam

A St. Helena Island man believes he was recently the target of a phone scam, but he wasn’t fooled.

The man received two text messages from nearly identical unknown numbers around 8 p.m. Friday saying his Wachovia bank account was about to be frozen, according to a Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office report. He told a deputy he didn’t have an account with that bank, which is now owned by Wells Fargo, so he called one of the numbers back to see what was going on.

A voice on the other end asked for his credit card number, but the man hit the pound sign in an attempt to speak with a real person, according to the report. When he did that, the line went dead.

He didn’t give away his card number on the phone so he didn’t lose any money through the call that is believed to be a scam, according to the report.

This story was originally published May 28, 2017 at 6:51 PM with the headline "St. Helena man was too smart for this phone scam."