by Leslie Farin
Scammers are often brilliant, and they are becoming more and more sophisticated in their efforts to defraud innocent people. Here is one new debit card scam that happened recently to a friend.
Here’s how it goes:
My friend received a call on her cell phone and the caller ID was her bank. Upon answering, the guy explains he’s from the bank’s fraud dept and is calling about her debit card ending in —-(the 4 correct numbers). He then asked if she traveled recently as there were two suspicious charges from out-of-state stores (Lowe’s and Walmart). “No”, she said, “It wasn’t me”.
The caller says they’ll send a new card. He knew her address and all her phone numbers. He proceeded to send a verification code to her cell phone and asked her to read it to him. THEN HE ASKED FOR HER PIN NUMBER, so he could deactivate it. That’s where she became suspicious and started to ask questions. The caller had a reasonable answer for all her questions. He told her to look at the number on the caller ID and confirm it matched the number on the back of her debit card. It did!
Still, she wisely asked at that point if she could call him back. Of course he hung up. She reported the call to her bank’s fraud department, who said “WE WOULD NEVER ASK FOR YOUR PIN NUMBER”. They immediately cancelled her debit card and explained this scam is a new one, and is more sophisticated than most. They had received multiple calls about similar incidents.
The bank representative further explained that if she had an identity protection service, and everyone should these days, she would receive an alert from the service before this type of call ever came. That’s a good tip.
Please share this story with everyone you know!
Note: This particular scam is new, but there are others also commonly used by fraudsters. Learn more HERE.
