CBS’ Matt Gutman Issues Warning After Nearly Falling for Sophisticated Phone Scam: ‘Very Scary Experience’

A veteran newsman who has spent years reporting on scams almost became the victim of one himself, and he’s now warning others after a phone call nearly convinced him to empty his bank account.

CBS chief correspondent Matt Gutman revealed in a video posted on X on July 10, that he came dangerously close to getting scammed after a caller claiming to work in his bank’s fraud protection department convinced him hackers were targeting his account.

Gutman, 48, said he considered himself “savvy” and had reported on countless scams over the years, making the experience all the more surprising.

“This person gave me a name, they gave me a badge ID,” he began in the social media post. “They seemed to know so much about me, about my bank account and then they said, ‘Listen, we suspect there is significant fraud activity at the bank branch where you bank and what we need you to do right now.’ We went through all of the accounts and we actually had some suspicious activity recently in my daughter’s account.”

The caller then instructed him to withdraw all of his funds in cash to “trigger the fraudsters into action.” Gutman said the plan felt “a little weird,” but he went to his bank branch anyway, and was told not to alert staff because “they might be in on it.

He told his followers, “So I go to the teller and I start doing the thing and I’m like, there is no way this is possibly real, that anybody would use a regular civilian for a sting operation at a bank.”

Gutman ultimately walked away, later calling it a “very scary experience.”

The post resonated with followers. Dozens of X users flooded the replies with their own close calls, several describing scams that mirrored Gutman’s almost detail for detail.

One commenter said their mother was talked into withdrawing thousands and mailing the bills to a fake evaluation address. Another said a bank teller drained more than $10,000 from their account over several months by posing as trustworthy. A third recalled being on the phone for fifteen minutes before a request to hand cash to a fake security courier tipped them off.

In a follow-up X post on July 11, Gutman offered his followers tips on how to avoid getting scammed.

“The first thing we should have done was hung up and called the number on the back of the card. We didn’t think about it,” he wrote. “Second major thing, no bank is ever going to ask you to pull your money out of your account. I knew that, that was a major red flag.”

He continued, “Third major issue is the isolation trap. They are trying to get you not to tell anyone… that was a massive red flag for me too. That’s when I knew to call the police.”

He also warned about how convincing scammers can sound.

“They will be smooth. They will be calm,” he said. “Don’t fall for that trap.”