Andy Cohen Was Scammed Out of 'A Lot of Money' By Hackers

Bravo king Andy Cohen recently got hoodwinked out of “a lot of money” by scammers. On last week’s episode of his podcast, Daddy Diaries, 55-year-old Andy explained that he got a call from someone saying they were “fraud alert” from his bank. This made sense to Andy; he’d recently lost a debit card and the caller ID showed up as the name of his bank (those no-good scammers hacked it). Plus, moments before the call, he’d received a suspicious email:

…I got an email being like, ‘There may be fraud on your account’, and I was like, “Oh, this is attached to the card that I lost.” And I logged into my bank account. And then it asked me for my Apple ID and password and I was like, “Ok, this never happens.” So I bailed out.

But I had already logged into my bank app and I think somehow my logging in through whatever this site was gave them access to my bank app.

Right after the email, the hackers phoned Andy pretending to be his bank’s fraud alert team. At this point, Andy was under the impression that his bank was calling about his lost debit card and the email:

I go, “Yes, yes. We need to talk.” And they were naming (name ‘em!) credits that I had made, charges, because they clearly had access to my account.

Andy thought the call was legit cuz they were naming real charges. He says, in retrospect, he should have hung up and gone to his bank to figure everything out. “Instead, I stayed on the line with this woman for an hour and ten minutes.”

After going over a bunch of charges, the fraudster told Andy to enter some numbers into his phone. He did, and unknowingly set up call forwarding. This meant he never received calls from his real bank inquiring about the large sum of wire transfers. Eventually, the grifter ended the call and told Andy she’d call him back in a half hour. She didn’t.

So, Andy phoned up his bank’s real fraud alert, who said they’d add him to the queue and call him back. Unfortunately, all those calls were forwarded to the scammers. After getting several scary alerts that money was being moved out of his account, Andy finally just went to his bank in person. He says:

These people wired out of two accounts that I have… a lot of money. And what happened is the bank called me to confirm the wires that these fraudsters did, but because I had set up call forwarding, the call forwarding went to the scam artist. And they confirmed the wires. So I’m in the process of trying to get my money back.

Apparently, Andy told Radio Andy’s Jeff Lewis that he lost around $100,000. Damn! Andy seems pretty tech-savvy, and it’s not like he’s unfamiliar with scams (see: Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’s Jen Shah screwing a bunch of elderly people out of their life savings). It just goes to show how easy it is to become a target. Stay safe out there!