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Beware of Hackers Pretending to be Your Bank

We continue to hear stories of very believable scams of hackers sending texts or calling people pretending to be your bank with some variation of there is fraud and we are here to help you. Even if it sounds believable, be very, very suspicious.

In a local news story tonight a woman was scammed out of $19,000. She did not get suspicious until it was too late.

In this case – but not all of them – it was a Zelle transfer. Zelle, like PayPal, is not a regulated banking service, so those transfers are much riskier. Federal laws that protect checking, savings, credit and debit transactions do not apply, for the most part, to Zelle. In fairness to the banks, in this case Wells, the banks are getting scammed to the tune of billions of dollars a year. Chase has resorted to suing some of its customers for the scams that they are part of.

The banks have been very good about refunding money when the account is hacked, but less willing to refund your money if you willingly participate in the transfer. Even if the “willing” part is you getting conned.

So, some tips.

1. If you get a call or text or email from someone claiming to be letting you know about fraud on your account and they are here to help you, RUN. ASSUME it is a scam until proven otherwise. DO NOT INTERACT WITH THE EMAIL, TEXT OR PHONE CALL. PERIOD. NO EXCEPTIONS.
2. IF THIS RELATED TO YOUR BUSINESS ACCOUNTS, THE RULES ARE MUCH LESS FAVORABLE TO YOU. CONTACT YOUR INTERNAL SECURITY DEPARTMENT IMMEDIATELY. IF YOU DON’T HAVE ONE, CONTACT YOUR CFO, CEO OR SIMILAR PERSON.
3. IF you have a relationship with a banker at your bank, call that person at his or her known number and ask for help.
4. Contact your local FBI office or US Secret Service office, explain what happened (THIS ASSUMES THAT YOU FELL FOR THE SCAM AND MONEY WAS TRANSFERRED OUT OF YOUR ACCOUNT). If you do this quickly enough, they can often, but not always, recover at least some of the money.
5. File a report with the FBI at HTTPS://WWW.IC3.GOV . This is usually only going to catch the big crooks, but you don’t know if you are just one victim in a big fraud ring.
6. Assuming you don’t have someone from item 2, call the number on the back of your credit or debit card, depending on where the fraud took place (bank account fraud=debit card, credit card fraud=credit card). ASK TO SPEAK TO THE FRAUD DEPARTMENT AND STAY ON HOLD UNTIL YOU TALK TO SOMEONE. Explain what happened and go from there.
7. TIME IS YOUR ENEMY. EVEN A FEW HOURS HURTS. MOVE QUICKLY AND WITH INTENTION.

No one wants to deal with this but knowing what to do is critical.

One thing to consider. In the olden days, before the Internet, people assumed that they would be made whole when financial transactions went wonky. That is not always true any more, as this woman learned. You need to be knowledgeable enough to protect yourself. Knowledge is your friend.

Credit: 9News