Sea Pines man reports possible phone hacking after callers ask for free vacations

A Sea Pines man reported that his phone may have been hacked or cloned Monday. That report followed nearly a month of changing his phone number, bank account information and receiving calls from people inquiring about free trips they said they had won.

The incidents happened between Nov. 9 and Nov. 25 to a man, according to a Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office report, and were reported Monday.

The victim told a deputy he had received a text message to his original phone number that said there was a problem with his banking accounts at Wells Fargo Bank, the report said. The message came from a New Jersey area code.

The man did not call the number that the text came from and instead reported it to Wells Fargo. The bank told him there was not anything wrong with his accounts.

On Nov. 12, the man was called twice by “elderly people” who asked him if he had called them about winning free vacations. The man then called Verizon, who recommended he delete the text message and phone number concerning his Wells Fargo accounts and issued him a new telephone number.

There were two more instances in which his new phone number had been used. He told a deputy that he did not know where his phone may have compromised and that he was filing the report at Verizon’s request so the company could launch a fraud investigation.

This story was originally published December 5, 2017 at 1:57 PM with the headline "Sea Pines man reports possible phone hacking after callers ask for free vacations."