***It's official, USAA is an absolute joke as a bank!!!***

Our daughter Annika’s world was just turned upside down as a result of scammers wiping out her college and life’s savings accounts. At 18 years old and 1700 miles away at college, she is learning a hard lesson that no 18 year old should have to learn. The scammers hacked into her USAA account, called her and posed as a USAA representative with access to all of her information, and proceeded to convince her to withdraw money against a loan that she never took out. The scammers were able to move money freely within her accounts. When she deposited the money into another bank ATM, the money was gone. They were so convincing they practically scammed me too. They were able to move money freely within my account and had access to all of our member numbers and accounts with balances.

It absolutely devastated me to hear the pain in our little girl's voice when she realized what had transpired. She is such a tough kid. She is attending D’Youville University in New York on a partial girls wrestling scholarship. She also works in the little time she gets as a Starbucks barista. This is the kid that knows the value of hard work. At the age of 9 she was placing fliers around the neighborhood offering to walk dogs around the block for a dollar. At 13 she paid for her own phone outright with the money she earned. This kid values the meaning of hard work. What I didn’t know right away is that this event has caused her significant emotional distress. Her college savings helps pay for her tuition, room, and board. The partial scholarship and the VA disability education benefits she receives from my service covers about half of her schooling.

Annika went into an immediate depression as a result of the scam. Thankfully she reached out to her wrestling coach who was able to build her mental resilience and point her to other school mental health resources. We are asking the community to please help Annika stay in school. She has such a promising future that was nearly pulled out from under her feet. We are all so proud of the young lady Annika has become and we are doing everything we can as parents to help her see her wrestling and education through. Thank you all for your support!