Man Calls United Airlines, Gets Scammed For $17K: Here’s How It Happened

There are lots of scammers who try to take advantage of unsuspecting airline passengers. One common scam is that you’ll see phone numbers listed online that claim to be official airline phone numbers, but in reality, they’re just the phone numbers of scammers. So people call those numbers thinking they’re talking to an airline representative, when in reality, that’s not the case.

Here’s a bizarre variation of that — a traveler called United Airlines’ official phone number, but somehow got scammed for over $17,000. I first covered this several days ago, but there’s now an update, as we finally know what happened that caused this. Let’s go over the basics of the story, and then I’ll share the update.

Traveler scammed for $17K on United phone call

9NEWS was first to report on an interesting story about a Denver-area man who was trying to take his family on an 18-day trip to Europe in late May 2025. He had booked tickets with United, but the family’s outbound flight ended up being canceled.

To try and salvage the trip, the man called United’s customer service line. While he was briefly connected to a female agent, he ended up being transferred to a male agent who identified himself as David, and he spent over three hours on the line with him.

The representative reportedly told him that in order to rebook his flights, he’d have to place a $17,328 charge on his credit card, but then United would refund that money, to reimburse him for the cancelation. The traveler was placed on hold for a long time, and eventually the representative came back and said that he couldn’t rebook the flights, but assured him that the charge would be refunded.

However, months later, he still hasn’t received a refund. A confirmation email suggested the ticket would be refunded within 45-50 business days. So after that amount of time, he called and was connected directly to “David,” who said he would look into it and get back to him. He was then ghosted.

This is when the help of the 9NEWS investigative reporter was enlisted, who noticed the following:

• The confirmation email about the $17,328 charge didn’t actually come from a United email address, and looked very suspicious
• The credit card statement didn’t show the charge as being from United, but instead, showed a generic company called “AIRLINEFARE”

Now, you’d assume that what happened is that the traveler just looked up the wrong phone number on Google, which is a common way to be scammed. But that’s not the case.

The traveler shared the call logs, showing a 3hr16min call to United’s official phone number. United even confirmed that the airline received calls from the traveler at the time he claimed, with one major discrepancy — United’s call log showed a 12-minute call, at the end of which the man dropped off the call, and there was no further recording. However, the traveler’s call log showed a much longer phone call.

The man filed a credit card dispute for the fraudulent charge, but that hasn’t yet been resolved. For those curious about his trip, he was able to rebook the trip on a separate phone call, obviously without a $17K+ charge.

Here’s how this bizarre situation happened

As I wrote about when this story first came out, it seems that the traveler actually called United’s official phone number, only to be transferred to a scammer. I provided the following possible explanations:

• Did the initial United call center agent intentionally transfer this call to a scam phone number, making this an inside job?
• Or did the United call center agent accidentally transfer the call to a scam phone number? Maybe the traveler needed to talk to a different department, and the initial agent Googled the phone number, and fell for the scam herself?
• Or did the scammers somehow intercept United phone calls, in a way that’s hard to make sense of?

Well, we now know, as United has shared the results of its investigation. The United representative reportedly Googled the phone number for the other airline he was going to be rebooked on. However, the agent fell for the common online scam, and dialed one of the scam numbers.

It’s being claimed that this was an honest mistake. I obviously don’t know for sure, but I’m a little suspicious, and can’t help but wonder if it was actually intentional. I mean, in what situation would an airline representative transfer someone to another airline to rebook, and how would the other agent know to present as a United agent, in some form?

So yeah, the United phone agent fell for a scam. Oy, that’s bad. That being said, my goodness, it’s amazing that this guy fell for this, after having his call transferred. I mean, the confirmation email is very obviously not from United, and it’s a pretty obvious scam.

One should also certainly be suspicious if an airline representative tells you that they’re gong to charge you an amount and then refund you that amount. But maybe this guy somehow felt it must be legitimate, since he called the official phone number?

Bottom line

A family had a trip booked to Europe on United Airlines, but there ended up being irregular operations. So one of the travelers called United’s official number, only to end up being scammed for over $17,000. United showed the call as having lasted for 12 minutes, while the traveler’s call log showed the call as having lasted for over three hours.

An investigation has now determined what happened — the United agent reportedly Googled the phone number of another airline, and accidentally transferred his call to a scam number, rather than the legitimate airline number. Or at least that’s the claim.

What do you make of this wild situation?