CBS News chief correspondent Matt Gutman is detailing the “remarkably sophisticated” scam that almost cost him his entire bank account.
The journalist took to X on Friday, July 10, revealing the scam almost had him pull all of his funds out of one account after speaking with a woman over the phone who seemed highly knowledgeable.
A Call That Knew Too Much
“Got a call about an hour ago from someone claiming to be from fraud protection at my bank,” he said in a video, recording while he appeared to be outside of a Bank of America location. “This person gave me a name; they gave me a badge ID. They seem to know so much about me, about my bank account.”
He said the woman claimed people were trying to withdraw money from his account and that the branch where he banks had seen “significant fraud activity” as of late. Gutman, 48, said he was already wary of fraud given “some suspicious activity recently” in his daughter’s bank account.
The woman told him, “Well, what we need you to do in order to intercept these fraudsters is to go into the bank and withdraw everything from your bank account,” which “wasn’t that much money” at that point, he said, “and take it with you so you have it in cash, and that’ll trigger the fraudsters into action.”
Catching Himself Mid-Scam
The “48 Hours” lead correspondent said he then began to question the scam, thinking it was “a little weird” that a “regular citizen” was being used to solve a “law enforcement issue,” and after being told he could not tell the bank employees what he was doing because “they might be in on it.”
“So I go to the teller, and I start doing the thing, and I’m like, ‘There is no way that this is possibly real, that anybody would use a regular civilian for a sting operation at a bank,’” he said.
In his caption, Gutman thanked the Los Angeles Police Department and Bank of America for “helping me avert a potentially dangerous disaster.” He theorized that if he had withdrawn the money and left the branch, it could have been “scary.”
“I would have been walking around with thousands of dollars in cash at a place known to those scammers because they directed me to my local bank branch,” he continued in the video. “I was told that this happens all the time, and then they either rob your car or they rob you.”
A Wake-Up Call, Even For A Scam Reporter
The former ABC News foreign correspondent and Emmy and Peabody Award winner called the scam a wake-up call.
“I am a journalist, and I’ve done scam stories so many times throughout my career, and I came so close to falling for it,” he said. “I’m not as savvy as I think I am, and that should be a lesson, I guess, to all of us. Some of these scams are incredibly sophisticated, with people who clearly know what they are talking about.”
Gutman has been with CBS News since 2025 and was the first major hire for CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.
