Andy Cohen Says Fraudsters Scammed Him Out of ‘a Lot of Money’

We now know what one of Andy Cohen’s new year’s resolutions is: to get his money back.

The TV host recently revealed that he was the victim of a scam in which the fraudsters were able to make off with “a lot of money,” the New York Post reported on Monday. Cohen spilled the deets on his Daddy Diaries podcast, using the tale as a PSA to listeners about the value of avoiding scam calls and emails.

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“Part of my advice for people is that if something is happening, just go to your bank branch,” he said.

Cohen’s problem began when he received a call purporting to be from his bank in response to potentially fraudulent activity on his account. The Watch What Happens Live host had recently lost a debit card, so he didn’t necessarily think twice about the call. Plus, Cohen thinks that the scammers had hacked caller ID so that when they called, it showed up with the name of his bank.

Since nothing seemed sketchy at first, Cohen stayed on the phone with the fraudsters for a long while trying to sort everything out—a whole hour and 10 minutes, he said. In that time, they were able to get enough personal information from the host and gain access to his money.

“I had already logged into my bank app, and I think somehow, my logging in through whatever this site was gave them access to my bank app,” he said. “They were naming credits that I had made—the charges—because they clearly had access to my account.”

The ruse was so sophisticated that once the hackers took the money out of Cohen’s accounts, he didn’t learn about it right away: They had also set up call forwarding on Cohen’s phone, so calls from his bank asking about the money transfers never even reached him. Eventually, the hackers asked for Cohen’s Apple ID and password, which sent up red flags and led the host to realize what was going on. Now he’s in the process of trying to get his money back.

Let Cohen’s misfortune serve as a reminder to us all that those annoying trainings about how to avoid phishing scams may be serving a real, useful purpose.

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