Convincing con artists target north suburban school bus driver, trying to steal $5,000 worth of Apple products
Your phone rings. It's a number you don't recognize, so you let it go to voicemail. When you check it later, it's an offer from your wireless carrier, rewarding loyal customers with a service discount and a free phone. It's a deal too tempting to resist.
The Bait
Nate Lewis of Round Lake, Illinois, received that kind of voicemail in October 2025 and responded to a few days later. He thought the people on the other end of the line were legitimate AT&T representatives.
"They told me that I could save 50 percent on my bill, but I would have to open a new line and get a new phone. I'm like, okay," said Lewis.
He said they knew everything about him, including his name, his phone number and his address.
"So, they took me through the process of ordering the phone," he said, using the AT&T app he already had on his phone.
The conversation was so convincing he thought the deal was real.
"I absolutely thought they were AT&T," he said.
All he had to pay upfront was the $98 sales tax. He paid for it through the app.
"I did have to put it on my credit card," he said.
When the new iPhone 17 Pro Max arrived a few days later he ran into a big problem when he tried to activate it.
"They told me to call them so that I can get the discount because if I go through any other process, like calling AT&T directly or whatever, I wouldn't get the discount," said Lewis.
So, he called the number again.
"They told me to give them the serial number off the phone. I did that. They put me on hold. After a while they were like, sorry, the phone that you got belonged to somebody else," he said.
He couldn't activate the new phone. He was told his phone and someone else's got mixed up.
"So, just send this phone back and we'll ship you your phone. They sent me a label, a barcode. So I took it to the UPS store, and they shipped it," he explained.
Lewis was notified that it arrived in Hesperia, California, but he never got refunded the more than $1,000 charge for the supposedly free phone.
"So, they were like, okay, well, we'll give you a refund back, it'll take three to five days. But for your troubles we'll let you pick out two new devices," he said.
He chose another iPhone 17 Pro Max and an iPad. Again, he was instructed to order them through his AT&T app. When those devices arrived, again, he couldn't activate either one. And again, he was told to ship them back with a prepaid label.
"So, I thought that was pretty odd. You know, fool me once shame on you. But fool me twice, shame on me," said Lewis.
The Scam
AT&T in an email to CBS News Chicago Investigators called this a "sophisticated scam."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation called this a "tech/customer support scam." The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported 36,002 complaints about that type of scam in 2024 nationwide . It was the sixth highest complaint total that year, and the losses added up to nearly $1.5 billion, the third highest loss total.
In Illinois, between 2016 and 2024, the number of tech support fraud victims quadrupled, and the amount stolen from them skyrocketed from $161,000 to more than $36.5 million.
The Federal Communications Commission, which regulates robocalls like the one Lewis received, said the agency "has received hundreds of complaints from victims of fraudsters impersonating telecom providers – including AT&T."
YouMail, a developer of voicemail and robocall-blocking software, collects robocall data to determine the impact of calls like the one Lewis received.
"We're getting fewer robocalls now than we were four or five years ago, so the volume of robocalls is going down. That's the good news," said Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail.
Robocalls have decreased nationally and in the Chicago area over the past 12 months, in part due to newer federal regulations.
But Quilici said total monetary losses from scams have grown.
"The total losses have actually gone up over the past few years at the same time robocalls have gone down, which means they [scammers] are making more money per call," he said.
To improve on the return on their investment, Quilici said scammers are now targeting more narrowly and more frequently. For example, instead of targeting all people over 65 — a group of tens of millions of people — they instead look for a vulnerable subset.
"They call the 200,000 people on the Alzheimer's list," he said.
Where do scammers get that information?
"They have a ton of data on the person they were scamming and so that comes from data breaches," Quilici explained.
Sure enough, Lewis received notice from AT&T that his personal information had been compromised in a previous data breach.
"They're going to be able to convince you they're whoever they're impersonating," said Quilici.
On and Off the Hook
Lewis said he submitted several fraud claims to AT&T, but since he ordered the original phone, he was still on the hook for the bill.
"When I was responsible for all of that money, I'm like, I cannot pay this back," he said.
He was able to return the second iPhone and the iPad to a Gurnee AT&T store. He was refunded the cost of the devices and the taxes. That saved him around $4,000.
But he still had that $1,000 bill due in late January to pay.
"I mean, in this economy who can afford that? I couldn't. I'm just a [lowly] bus driver who someone tried to take advantage of," he said.
So, Lewis reached out to the CBS News Chicago Investigators for help. In an emailed statement, AT&T responded to the CBS News Chicago inquiry on Lewis' behalf, writing, "We understand this customer was a victim of a sophisticated scam, something we take very seriously. We helped address his concerns with his account."
"Before you know it, AT&T was on the phone calling me up, trying to take care of the situation. They did and I was glad because I couldn't afford that," Lewis said.
Report a Scam
You can submit a fraud claim to the FBI here.
You can find additional tips on how to protect yourself from robocalls or unwanted texts, as well as how to submit a complaint to the FCC here.