It is being reported that scammers are sending out text messages to people that purport to be their bank telling them that they have an outgoing payment and want to confirm the payment. Reply with yes to let it through and no to stop it.

Then when they respond, the scammers quickly call them up, claiming to be from the bank's fraud department and calling to help secure the account. They ask questions that they can then use for their other nefarious purposes such as opening up accounts at other banks in the person's name and using it in their scamming.

One guy even had the bright idea of calling the bank on another line to verify that they were on the line with him. They did. He then happily gave the information to the scammers. It turned out that the scammers had another person talking to the bank on another line. When the bank asked the scammer who called them for identification information, the other scammer got the information from the client.

There's an article on this at: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/11/sms-about-bank-fraud-as-a-pretext-for-voice-phishing/

The proper way to deal with someone calling you from the bank, credit card company, ..., is to hang up on them and call back using the telephone number from the back of the bank card or the credit card.

It's pretty simple to avoid stuff like this. I block/delete any text I get that isn't known to me and I never answer the phone unless it's a number I know. Always assume any contact you get via phone that is not in your contacts list is a scam and you're good.

YouBet said:

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It's pretty simple to avoid stuff like this. I block/delete any text I get that isn't known to me and I never answer the phone unless it's a number I know. Always assume any contact you get via phone that is not in your contacts list is a scam and you're good.

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In this case, they would probably be spoofing the bank's telephone number when they send the message. So it may not be enough to know the number.

In my case, I can pretty much recognize the voice of the most likely people at the bank to call.

From one of the messages on the site from readers:

Quote:

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I spoke recently with a customer who hung up and called us before the criminals could finish their scam. He was amazed that they've spoofed not only our main phone number and our SMS text number, but also the hold music, security questions, and our lingo. We began to compare and the ONLY thing we discovered they could NOT do is read our regulatory and compliance disclosures when we are sending the customer a new debit or credit card or when we are accessing their credit card account.

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So the scammers use
1) the bank's phone number
2) the bank's SMS text number
3) the bank's hold music
4) the security questions
5) the lingo.

Been getting a bunch of texts purportedly from USAA lately - they say the new account has successfully been linked in their system and then give me a number to call that is close to the USAA number. They address me by some generic name that isn't me, but I guess they assume I'll call to make sure Karen's account isn't getting my money. USAA's fraud department (at their actual number) sucks and spent 30 minutes confirming my name is not Karen and trying to get me to admit that I must have tried to link another account.

Genius scam I guess since the bank on the other side of it can't stop tripping over themselves.

My wife was entering a routing number for an online transfer and notice a typo. When she corrected it, she saw the number change again. She looked up the number of the new routing number and it was for an offshore bank notorious for fraud.

I don't know if it was a client or server side attack but it has me a bit worried that I'll have to nuke my home network soon.

I have yet to activate my on-line banking in hopes that not doing so will reduce my exposure to such frauds.

Some of the scams where they try to get you to buy gift cards to pay them "their" money involve them using your on-line bank account to "refund" far more than the amount of the so-called refund. I've heard that if you don't bank on-line it makes it far more difficult. So that kind of scam wouldn't even work on me.

There are still scams in which they convince you that someone close to you got arrested in a foreign country and needs you to pay the attorney to get them out. One news item last week was about an elderly woman in Florida who lost $700,000 to that. She would go to the bank to withdraw money to send them. She has filed a lawsuit against the bank for not questioning her why she was taking out so much money.

I don't understand why it is not a federal felony to spoof a phone number. Or, if it is, it sure isn't a big area of enforcement, but I don't believe it is. Wire fraud is almost always used as a secondary offense when they can't get someone on the underlying offense. You'd think if they truly wanted to get rid of this nonsense they'd make spoofing an outright felony and be done with a large portion of it. The great risk of it would eliminate doing it for many/most.

It wouldn't stop all of it, but it would stop a lot. I know a lot of it comes from outside the country but some a great deal of it is inside.

One thing I do with scammers is ask them to send it by mail.

That way, if it is a scam, it is mail fraud.

Just saw a post on Nextdoor with 70 comments (and rising) about the same scam claiming to be part of USAA. Watch out for any of those that use it....

This happened to a close friend of mine recently and the story is almost unbelievable. They knew private details of his life and banking habits (including transactions) so he assumed it was legit. Had to have been an inside job or former Chase Bank employee with stolen info. Ended up getting it all back but it was not easy and took about 3 months.

Got that text last week before seeing this and immediately reported it as spam to Verizon.

If it seems fishy, it usually is.