We nearly got caught by scammers. Be ready because they will come calling

We had a close call with scammers recently. While we were in Cyprus, my wife got a message from what she thought was our bank at home. It looked genuine and, to cut a long story short, it sucked us in. She spoke to a guy on the other end of the phone who was very convincing. He even told my wife to hang up and he would call her back just to ensure the call was genuine.

He did receive a lot of information before the call ended. A few minutes later however, we got another phone call. This time it was from the Fraud Section of the PTSB who told us they had discovered a suspicious transaction on our account which they thought looked peculiar. Someone was trying to relieve us of two and a half thousand Euro.

The bank blocked the transaction immediately and put a hold on our account. The scammers were good but fortunately for us, the fraud guys were better, and they prevented us from losing a substantial sum of money. Apart from the potential financial loss, these fraudsters cause a huge amount of inconvenience too.

The bank had to cancel our credit cards and that’s the second time it’s happened to us out here Because our cards were cancelled, we had to order replacements and as happened previously, they were sent to our home address in Cork. We had to arrange to get them out here to us but in the meantime, our standing orders were bouncing back to us, so we had to rearrange all those as well.

These thieves have caused us an amount of inconvenience and stress and it’s all very frustrating. I only hope that someday, the law will catch up with them and give them their just rewards. In the meantime, I wish them all kinds of excruciating pain for the remainder of their miserable lives.

It is also very embarrassing that someone who has spent thirty-five years in An Garda Siochana should have been duped so easily. My wife isn’t feeling too good about being codded either. She is annoyed because she would have considered herself to be street wise too.

We’re both computer literate and reasonably tech savvy for our years but I know many of my generation and older who would be even more trusting than we are which makes them soft targets for scammers. I wonder how many more vulnerable people are being robbed on a daily basis?

So, how do we protect ourselves? Well, for starters there is plenty of professional advice available and we need to start listening to it.

FraudSMART is a fraud awareness initiative developed by Banking & Payments Federation Ireland, and they aim to raise consumer and business awareness of the latest financial fraud activity and trends and provide simple and impartial advice on how best they can protect themselves and their resources.

They are advising consumers to be on alert for text message and phone scams currently in circulation claiming to be from your bank. These are very convincing and sophisticated scams. 

I have merely glanced over this kind of advice in the past because I thought I was really tuned in and could never be caught. But when you get a call or a message, that has all the appearance of being genuine, advising you that you are at risk of losing money from your account, it kind of throws you into a bit of a spin.

The professional scammers are very practised in what they do and once you take the initial bait, they skilfully reel you in. As someone who has had a close call and feels a bit foolish, I would encourage everyone to read the advice from FraudSMART. Not just to read it but to actually take it in and be ready for the scammers when they come calling.

So, how does the scam happen? You may receive a phone call and/or text message which creates a sense of urgency in relation to a ‘suspicious payment’ from your account or other security issue. A text message may ask you to click on a link, call a number or even expect a call from their security team using a landline or private ID.

If you do click the link, you may find yourself on a fraudulent online banking login page that mimics the real bank login page. In some cases, you may receive an authorisation code and be asked to input it on screen to ‘reactivate your account’ or ‘cancel a fraudulent payment’ – however this actually gives the fraudster access to your account.

If you receive a fraudulent call, the number may mimic the genuine number of the bank. The fraudster will try to get personal, financial and security information. The fraudster may imply that if you don’t act immediately, it will have negative consequences, for example, that money will be lost from your account.

Remember that a bank will never text/email/phone you asking for personal information, will never send you a link on a text message, will not ask you to delete your banking app or to avoid logging into banking online. A bank will never ask you to click on a link or for personal information.

If you take nothing else from this piece of advice, heed this. If someone is pressurising you on the phone to take urgent action, hang up and call the number on the back of your debit / credit card. Never give away personal information, bank card payment details, bank account details or security details such as your PIN or online password to anyone. Block the sender of a suspicious email or text message and delete the message.

Anyone can be a target of this kind of scam as I found out.