'Scary!': How a stolen phone number helped hackers steal $25K from 86-year-old's bank account

"Eighty-six-year-old Joann returned home from the hospital when she noticed her landline telephone wasn't working. Her son Steve tried calling AT&T to report the problem. "They said, 'Oh you know, there was a breach and we think your phone number from your landline was stolen!'" Steve said. "So that was really weird." Steve says AT&T gave Joann a new number."

"Steve says an investigation found the hackers stole more than just Joann's AT&T phone number. The account was still registered in her late husband's name. According to the investigation, hackers used his father's identity and paired it with the stolen number to gain access online to a joint Wells Fargo bank account in his parent's name. "It was too easy for this to happen," Steve said. "The failure from Wells Fargo... that they allowed the money to be taken out.""

An 86-year-old woman's landline number was hijacked and reassigned by a carrier, prompting AT&T to issue a new number. Weeks later, Wells Fargo flagged unusual activity after approximately $25,000 was wired from her joint savings account. Hackers converted the stolen landline to a cellphone on another carrier, then used the late husband's identity paired with the stolen number to access the joint online Wells Fargo account and initiate transfers. Family members criticized Wells Fargo for allowing the funds to be withdrawn and called the breach and account takeover alarmingly easy to execute. An investigation traced the theft to the phone-number conversion and identity misuse.

Read at ABC7 San Francisco