Reported by Brian New, Lexi Salazar

The second she hung up the phone, Phyllis Lopez knew she had been scammed.

“All I can say is I was dumb that morning because it just went right over my head,” said the 71-year-old Fort Worth resident.

The scheme started with a text message about a fraudulent charge. Then came a phone call where the ID read “Chase Bank.” The caller claimed to be a bank representative and told Lopez her savings account had been hacked. To protect her money, she needed to wire all $3,500 she had in her savings into a new account.

“I believed everything he was telling me,” she said. “And then right before he hung up he said, ‘Okay, Ms. Lopez,’ and then he said, ‘ha,’ like he was laughing at me.”

As Lopez’s heart dropped, she rushed to her local Fort Worth Chase Bank and pleaded with them to stop the transfer.

“They said, ‘Ms. Lopez, we really can’t do anything about it because you initiated it, you pushed the button.’ I was sick.”

Lopez, who was still grieving the death of her adult son, said she was embarrassed and devastated.

“I just felt like the whole world caved in on me,” she said.

Texas bank law prevents some scams but does little to help others

In 2017, Republican state Sen. Tan Parker of Flower Mound authored the Protection of Vulnerable Adults from Financial Exploitation Act, giving Texas bankers the power to freeze a bank account when they suspect the owner is a victim of a scam.

Since the law went into effect, there’s been a significant increase in reports to Adult Protective Services from financial institutions, up from 3,600 reports in 2017 to more than 6,400 in 2023.

“I think all those reports are incidences that we have, arguably, avoided a crisis or a nightmare for a senior citizen,” Parker said.

Read full report: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/texas/news/caught-in-the-scam-texas-seniors-and-banks-fight-financial-exploitation/