A metro Atlanta mother, Nina Lloyd, said a simple takeout order turned into a financial nightmare after she was scammed out of nearly $10,000, serving as a reminder of the sophisticated tactics hackers use to target unsuspecting individuals, even during routine transactions.

“I didn’t believe it was real. At all. I was like, this has to be some kind of mistake. There’s no way,” Lloyd told 11 Alive.

Lloyd said she was attempting to place a takeout order at Bonchon, a popular Korean fried chicken chain, when the checkout process unexpectedly redirected her to a page that appeared to be a third-party payment verification service.

READ ALSO: ‘Seriously’ – Matt Barnes addresses being scammed out of $61,000 by an AI model 

A wire transfer notification appeared after Lloyd was prompted to verify her bank account details while completing the online restaurant order.

“Immediately following, within a matter of a couple of minutes, I got a text that said I initiated a wire transfer for $9,900,” Lloyd recounted.

She explained that the money taken wasn’t just extra cash lying around waiting to be used; it was a significant portion of their family’s savings.

“That money that I received was a gift from an aunt who recently passed. She had sent it to me before her passing, and my husband has just lost his job last week, so we were actually really, really relieved that we had a little bit of cushion and security to get us through until he’s able to find his next job, and now we have literally nothing,” Lloyd said.

READ ALSO: Family of 6 homeless after falling prey to apartment scam

Since the incident, Lloyd said she has been actively working with her bank in an attempt to recover the significant amount of stolen funds, although she has not yet received a guarantee of full reimbursement.

She also hopes that by sharing her experience, it will serve as a crucial warning to others about the rise of increasingly sophisticated online scams.

“For me, I always thought the safest way to order food would be going directly through the website because I know a lot of the other apps, Doordash, Uber Eats, they have extra taxes and fees and so I always felt like going directly through the website was the safest way to do it, but I’ve learned that it’s not,” Lloyd said.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Bonchon’s corporate office told the outlet that the company is currently investigating the incident.

READ ALSO: Man Who Scammed Dwight Howard And Chandler Parsons Gets 12 Years In Prison