Passenger loses $17K after airlines employee accidentally transfers call to a scammer

A man in Denver, Colorado, lost US$17,000 (approx. $23,500 Canadian) after his phone call was transferred to a scammer by an operator in the customer service department of United Airlines.

Multiple news outlets in the United States are reporting on the incident, which was first brought to light by Steve Staeger , a consumer investigative reporter at NBC’s 9News in Denver.

Dan Smoker had reportedly been planning an 18-day trip to Europe with his wife, their children and some friends. But the flight from Denver to London was cancelled. So the next day, he called the United Airlines customer service line for help.

Smoker said his own call log showed he was on the phone for more than three hours, but a United Airlines representative told him he’d only been talking to them for 12 minutes.

Somewhere between those two extremes he was transferred to another “customer service agent” who called himself David. David said he could get Smoker and his party on a Lufthansa flight to Europe. He said Smoker would have to pay US$17,000 on his credit card but that it would be reimbursed later.

Smoker never got those tickets. He never got his money back either. This was when Staeger stepped in .

He assumed at first that Smoker had fallen victim to a secondary scam in which Googling a customer service number brings up a fake number that, when called, connects you to a scammer. But in fact, that’s what had happened to the United customer service rep on the first call.

On Friday, United confirmed to 9News: “The customer was transferred to an external number and the agent was not using our internal tools to validate the number.”

Smoker said David told him the cost of a new flight — US$17,000 — would have to be charged to his credit card but that United Airlines would refund the money. He said David put him on hold for a long time, then came back and said he couldn’t book the flight, but repeated that the charge would be refunded.

In an odd twist, Smoker said David eventually did also manage to rebook his party on another United flight, which went off without a hitch. But when he got his credit card statement, there was a charge for the real flight from United Airlines, and a US$17,000 charge to a generic company called “AIRLINEFARE.”

Of course, since the original flight was cancelled, there should not have been a charge to rebook. This might have raised a red flight, but the customer thought he was still talking to the airline.

“They have a system that people are supposed to trust,” Smoker told the New York Post. “I trusted that system. There was no reason that I shouldn’t have trusted that system, and I was scammed as a part of it.”

“We’ve been in direct contact with the customer to understand what happened in this case,” a United spokeswoman said in a statement to 9News. “We are reviewing this matter thoroughly. We’re committed to finding a fair resolution for him.”

Smoker reported that the credit card company is processing his fraud claim, and that United has assured him he’ll get his money back one way or another.

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