I got scammed

I tend to be a bit of a ditz so it really does not surprise me that something like this happened. I do find it a bit embarrassing though. It had all started with a call that in 48 hours a company called 'Vtech' was going to take $400 off my card. Logically I should have realized there was something wrong with that and that I have never done monthly bills over $100, but my first thought was. all the money that would come off my card the next day. So I called the number back to unsubscribe.

The guy had me open up a website and do a bunch of stuff on the site. I can not remember exactly what all I had to do, but after I gave him a number he had me hang up so another guy could call me. Then I got the second call and the other guy lead me through the rest of the 'refund'. I feel like I probably should have realized something was wrong around that time. Though there was a point where he wanted me to log into my bank account. I probably should mention that he could see my screen or maybe not I am not sure, but that was a thing. So that means he saw me put in my password and username. I have also struggled to remember my password so he also saw me change it constantly until I got in. He then said that so my bank did not take any money or something he was going to split the refund into two parts. Then he did some things until my screen was black with that old-fashioned typewriting kind of stuff and he told me to type in $200, but when I typed it in an extra zero kept showing up. I even deleted it about two to three times when it would just show back up. Then it went through scaring the living hell out of me. I was positive that I stole a company's money by accident. All I knew was that I was alone and I had to figure out how to give the money back.

The guy told me to wait and after a few minutes, he told me to go to a store to get three Nike gift cards with $500 on them. Like I said before right now I feel dumb because now I can see the issue with it, but at the time I was petrified I would get in trouble and this would end me in jail or something. This kind of thing never happened to me before. He then started texting me when I left for the nearest store. I got to the store and was able to buy one card, but I could not get the other cards because I was buying them separately so it claimed fraud when I tried to get the second card so I left and sent him the back of it as he wanted. I got so scared I realized if I was going to give the company back their money I was going to have to go to the bank so I went to get my sister's help. I was halfway there when I started crying. this guy was still on the phone and he could hear me. He was trying to figure out why, but the whole time all I could think was that I needed my sister's help.

When I got to my sister I could barely talk and tell her and her boyfriend what was going on. After I tried to explain it to them her boyfriend asked for the phone and that was when the guy hung up on the call and they asked which company it was and while I was trying to explain it her boyfriend looked up the company and it turned out it was a toy company. That was when they realized what happened. They explained to me what happened and he set up a virus detecter on my computer. I also called the bank to see what to do about the money I thought was in my account when the guy from the bank told me that there was no extra money put in my account and that the guy ended up taking $500 of my money and that I also needed to change my password and username. When I couldn't get it myself because why not I went to an actual bank and while the lady helped me she said that she was used to this kind of thing happening and that I could call a number to get my money back. I don't really care about the money that I lost. I am just glad that I did not lose more. Hopefully this story will help someone.