Is that “I lost my phone” text really your kid?
The text comes in from a number you don’t recognize: “Hi Mom, I lost my phone, this is my new number.” Then, sometime later that day or the next, a second message arrives asking you to send money, pay a bill, or buy gift cards because the old phone and banking app are locked. It reads exactly like your own child would text, because it’s written to.
If you replied, sent money, or even just saved the new number, you didn’t do anything careless. This scam is built to slip past the part of your brain that would normally ask more questions, by aiming straight at the part that just wants to help your kid.
How the scam works
It usually starts small and vague, on purpose. The first text doesn’t ask for anything, it just establishes a new number and a plausible reason for it. That gives the scammer time to build a conversation and gather details, and it gives you time to start believing it. Once you reply “is this you?” or ask a question, the scammer answers in a way that sounds like your child would, often using details they picked up from your reply or from public social media posts.
The ask that follows is almost always urgent and inconvenient to verify: a bill is due today, a deposit needs to go out before an account closes, a phone needs to be replaced before work tomorrow. Payment is requested through a method that’s hard to reverse, most often a payment app, gift cards, or a wire, and the scammer will often ask you not to call, because “my phone is broken” or “I’m in a meeting.”
Why it works even on careful people
The scam doesn’t rely on tricking you about who your child is, it relies on you not having a fast way to check. A new number on its own isn’t suspicious, people do lose phones, and the request to keep it quiet or move fast reads as considerate rather than alarming. The combination of a believable premise and a built-in reason not to verify is what makes this version of the family emergency scam effective on people who would never fall for an obvious one.
What to do if you get this text
- Don’t reply to the new number to ask “is this really you.” Instead, call or text your child on the number you already had for them, even if the message says that phone is lost or dead.
- If that number doesn’t answer, call another family member or a friend who might be with them, or reach them through a work or school contact, before you send anything.
- Agree on a simple verification question or phrase with close family members ahead of time, something a stranger couldn’t guess from a social media profile.
- Treat any request for gift cards, wire transfers, or crypto as a hard stop, regardless of who it appears to be from. Legitimate emergencies can wait for a phone call.
If you already sent money
Contact whatever service you used to send the money right away and ask if the payment can be canceled or reversed. Payment apps and banks vary widely in what they can do once a transfer has been accepted, but speed matters more than anything else here. If you sent gift cards, call the retailer or issuer, tell them the cards were used in a scam, and ask them to flag the balance, since some can freeze an unused card before it’s spent. Keep the original texts, the number they came from, and any payment confirmation, since you’ll want them for the reports below.
How to report it
File a report with the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, which tracks family emergency and impersonation scams and shares data with other agencies. If money was sent, also file with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at IC3.gov. You can forward the scam text itself to your carrier by copying it into a message to 7726 (SPAM), which helps carriers identify and block the numbers being used. None of these reports guarantee your money back, but each one adds to the picture investigators use to shut these numbers down.
This scam works because it borrows something real, the instinct to help your own kid without asking questions. A ten-second call to the number you already had is the whole defense, and it works every time. If a similar message came by phone instead of text, our post on the “grandchild in jail” call covers that version, and our post on wrong number texts covers a related pattern that starts the same way but ends somewhere different.
— Gus