Milwaukee man allowed a boy to borrow his cellphone to text his mother — and was scammed out of $5,000

“And I’m just kind of like, that internal panic kicks in, you know?” he said.

Rettinger thinks that the boy saw him type in his code to unlock the phone and that he used the same code to bypass the security on the Apple Pay transaction.

He said that his credit union acknowledged that he had been scammed, but it refused to cancel the transaction and said it was a valid charge.

“$5,000, in a very large grand scheme of things, isn’t that big of a deal, but for a 27-year-old that doesn’t have a lot of money that’s trying to make it, it’s huge,” Rettinger said to WISN.

A spokesperson for the UW Credit Union said that they empathized with Rettinger’s situation but they warned people not to fall for similar scams.

“Unfortunately, when certain authentication measures are completed — be it facial recognition or otherwise — it limits the financial institution’s ability to change the outcome of the disputed charge,” said the spokesperson.

Apple and Milwaukee police said they are investigating the incident.

Here’s the news video about the scam:

https://www.theblaze.com/news/boy-cellphone-scam-5k-text