Scary Fraud

  • Thread starter Thread starter Danoff
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Danoff

Danoff

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Mile High City
So my bank just called me up to make sure that I had authorized what they called a pre-authorized transfer of my money from my savings account to some dude I had never heard of. The dude was claiming that I had authorized the transfer (kinda like you would authorize AT&T to bill your account every month so you don't have to write a check).

my response:

"Um..... NO!"

The bank lady said it looked fishy and that's why she wanted to call.

One of the things that concerns me about his is that the guy seemed to know how much money was in the account. He wanted to drain (let me calculate it) 84% of the funds. You don't just guess that amount, he must have somehow known the total. 84% of my savings account isn't small change.

This is not good.

The bank lady said that they would flag the account to make sure that people had to verify stuff, but I think I'm going to want to take a few more measures to make sure that it's safe. Not sure what I'm going to do though. I'm wondering if I have spyware on one of my computers at home or something and they were somehow able to log in and see the numbers... but I would think they would try something more elaborate than saying it was a pre-authorized transfer.
 
Wow... that's bad. :dunce: You might want to look into some of your older bank records too, and make sure there isn't anything fishy in there.
 
Just open a new account. Not that hard, considering it's a saving account and you don't haev to worry about checks.
 
Why do people always think they can get away with things like this? Of course, it only takes one...

And I wouldn't change banks. It looks like the people working there have their eyes open for this kind of thing, which is always good. I would also check past bank records like mplacki said, just in case. I'ts not too likely anything will turn up, but you never know.

"I did NOT spend $4000 on *insert noun here*"
 
I would also check past bank records like mplacki said, just in case.
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Yea, that's a good idea. My wife is totally anal retentive about that though. She calculates it to the cent every month against our receipts and verifies that the bank didn't make an error - so I think we're ok.

My bank is closing that account for me an opening a new one. So that should help.

It makes me feel pretty vulnerable though. I mean, if for some reason I had been out that much money it would have been very very bad. I've got to give props to my bank for staying on top of things and checking it out though.

I'm going to check on my credit cards and other bank accounts just in case they got more information than just the one account.
 
Have you made any online transactions lately? Most banks tend to link savings accounts with checking accounts -- or at least that's the case Bank of New York. It's possible that you may have made an online transaction, someone stole your checking account number and linked it to your savings account. Perhaps you accidentally left behind information at your bank branch that was picked up by someone with bad intentions...

Anyway, as long as you have a new account -- that's all that matters.
 
danoff, is the FBI on this? Seriously. You may not be the only person this guy is trying to rip off. In fact, I doubt it.

Looks like your bank was on top of things, though. Glad you dodged that bullet. :scared:


M
 
danoff, is the FBI on this? Seriously. You may not be the only person this guy is trying to rip off. In fact, I doubt it.
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I don't know. But my bank will deny the other guy's bank the money, and so they'll have to take steps against him. I think I'll leave it up to the fraud department of my bank to call the FBI if that's appropriate.

I've been thinking about this all day though. Wondering whether the lady that called me was actually from the bank. Was the scam the one she was talking about or was she the scam. I don't think that's really possible considering I gave her no real information and she knew everything about my account, but hey... that's the kind of reality questioning this kind of stuff starts up. :)

(I just called her at the bank - she does actually work there)
 
danoff, you're lucky. Something like this happened to my coworker. It turned out, someone in Eastern Europe(I forgot the country) drained his account. The bank ended up taking care of it for him, replacing the funds. I also had heard of this elderly lady in the neighborhood, who had her bank account drained with an forged check. Apparently all of her money were in this account, and these scums just left her pennyless. Very upsetting stuff.
 
I think I become a victim of fraud. Every week after christmas my account suddenly has half as much in it as I had in it on boxing day. Weird, huh?
 
Sombody tried that with us about three years ago. But the lady wasn't from the bank. She was asking for out bank numbers. My wife knew then she was the fraudulent person trying to rip us off. I called the phone company on a different line and tried to get them to trace the call. But they said they couldn't do it without something in writing. Stupid, huh? As far as I know, this lady got away with it.

Oh, and I got a phony e-mail a few days ago asking for my MSN and bank account numbers. The e-mail said my MSN services will be cut off in less than 24 hours if I didn't respond to the link in the e-mail. Of course, I called MSN to see what was up first. Nothing was up. So they requested that I forward them the e-mail. They were very thankfull because they said it was somebody they didn't know about.
 
Solid Lifters
Oh, and I got a phony e-mail a few days ago asking for my MSN and bank account numbers. The e-mail said my MSN services will be cut off in less than 24 hours if I didn't respond to the link in the e-mail.
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I got the same thing a few months ago. Didn't work on me, either. Ours was set up so badly that my wife cought it and asked me to take a look at it, and she stinks at spotting stuff like that.
 
TB
I got the same thing a few months ago. Didn't work on me, either. Ours was set up so badly that my wife cought it and asked me to take a look at it, and she stinks at spotting stuff like that.
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Oh my god!! You mean I wasnt supposed to give my details to that email!! :scared:
I thought I could trust MSN :indiff:




:lol:
 
A little off topic, a 19 years old male was arrested yesterday here in my state, because of these bank emails hacking thing. He was doing that for almost two years, and had R$6.2 million on his account already. That´s about U$2,3 million.
 
FatAssBR
A little off topic, a 19 years old male was arrested yesterday here in my state, because of these bank emails hacking thing. He was doing that for almost two years, and had R$6.2 million on his account already. That´s about U$2,3 million.
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That's the whole point of it. Maybe only 1/1000th of 1 percent fall for it, but when you send out 30 million e-mails in one month, that's 30,000 people that gave you access to their account. Figure you swipe $10 from each of them, per week for a months, that's $1,200,000 you walked away from in a month.

Now, consider you vary that scheme tween a few different layouts and you're talking serious cash that could be addictive.

Scary fraud, indeed.

AO
 

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