Deborah Moss lost $160,000 (around £130,000) after unknowingly giving scammers the codes needed to pass bank security checks.
Ms Moss had spent over a decade saving this amount as she wanted to use it to slow her life down.
She runs her own small catering business and in 2021 she had finally saved enough to move homes and slow down.
However a few weeks after moving in she got a text from her bank asking if she had approved a $35 (around £28) card charge from another state.
As soon as she texted back “no”, she got call from who she thought was her bank.
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The scammers had spoofed the number so it had the call ID of her bank.
The person on the phone asked Ms Moss if they could send her a new debit card, to which she agreed as she thought her card was being used for fraud.
The person on the phone needed to verify some personal details so asked Ms Moss to read out the pin codes being sent to her phone, which she did.
Over the week, the same person continued to call saying there was a problem with her delivery and needed her to confirm her address. Each time they explained she had to go through the verification process and she was giving them the codes that were being sent to her phone.
Ms Moss said: “I just kept reading her the numbers and she said, ‘Yeah, that’s great.’”
Eventually, she went into the bank herself to collect the card and was devastated to hear it was all a ploy.
It was there a supervisor told her that her card had been very active. He explained that all her money was gone and, in fact, she owes the bank over $850 (around £690).
Ms Moss lost her life savings worth $160,000 (around £130,000).
She told CBS News: “It’s a lot of money. It took me 12 years to get that money and that was my life savings.”
The text messages she was receiving were actual texts from her bank as part of their two-step authentication process when people send bank transfers.
However, the scammers tricked Ms Moss into giving them those numbers which allowed them to evade security and transfer all her money to them.
They made six transfers with amounts as high as $48,000 (around £39,000) in a week.
Ms Moss concluded: “My whole world fell apart.”
