Phone fraud cost Mt Dora, FL business $30,000. Read this to protect yourself.

From a trusted Realtor in Mt. Dora, FL who got it from the Mt. Dora Chamber of Commerce. Dated Dec. 18, 2022

 

PLEASE READ THROUGH AND MAKE CERTAIN THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN TO YOU!!  DO NOT GIVE ANY INFORMATION OF ANY KIND OVER THE PHONE.  TELL THEM YOU WILL HANG UP AND CALL THEM BACK.

 

Christmas is the season for all frauds, including bank or credit card scams (VJ), so watch out.

 

Monday afternoon, Fifth Avenue Streatery got a call from a woman from XXXX bank (using the actual name of the bank they do business with and reinforced by the name on caller ID). The woman stated she was from the fraud department, and they expected that his account might have been compromised.

 

A variety of questions were asked, which all seemed normal such as:

 

“Were the following charges made by you?” She proceeded to give him the details of 2 charges, which ended up not being valid.

Then she asked, “how about these two?”, and both of them were valid, down to the penny, (take note that the two valid charges were from their personal card.)

 

The woman then said I am seeing a wire transfer for over $30,000. Is this valid? He replied NO, after that response she asked for him to confirm their business EIN number, he asked if she wanted the last 4 or all of it, and she said all of it, and he gave that out. Remember this call came in the middle of the day, at a restaurant, so in a panic, in his mind, he was trying to immediately stop a wire transfer for that large amount.

 

She appeared to be troubleshooting and asked who their phone service provider was, and he responded. With that, she walked him through how to get to the screen to add a call so she could connect them both with the tech department to get this transfer rectified, and once there, he was instructed to put in *72 and a series of numbers. He heard a message that said, “your calls are now being forwarded”. He asked why his calls were being forwarded and was told, “not to worry about that.”

At that time, he was now super suspicious, and went to another phone line and called himself, but his phone did not ring, they quickly researched and deactivated the call forwarding using *73 and within minutes, they received 20 plus non-contact phone calls, at this time the call was terminated.

 

So even though he immediately called his bank and was told there was no record in the accounts of the wire transaction. The assumption was all their accounts were frozen for wire transfers. By the next day, they logged onto the bank account and noticed that the money had indeed been transferred.

 

Unless you are techy, how can you even figure out what happened… in the panic of “is a wire transfer for 1000’s of dollars about to come out of my account”, some aren’t thinking about the ramifications. Did this hacker access their phone and all the login/passwords on the phone?

 

Many small to medium-sized businesses could go belly up with this type of fraudulent activity. And the owners of Fifth Avenue Streatery, could very well be in jeopardy. This could happen to any one of us, and Tim and Deb wanted to get this information out to Mount Dora businesses to be prepared if and when you get a call like this.

 

Many valuable lessons were learned, and as they say, hindsight is 20/20. Most importantly, did you know wire transfers are not FDIC insured? This could happen to anyone of us. If you are so inclined, please share this information with as many business owners as possible, we'd hate to see any other businesses fall victim to this scam.

 

Suggestions from First National Bank should you receive a call like this:

• Call your bank immediately and let them know your identity and accounts are compromised.
• Have your bank freeze the accounts so they won’t post transactions
• Cancel and issue new debit and credit cards
• Open new accounts. Once open, close old accounts
• If your computer or phone was compromised, you may need to have it wiped clean by a specialist.
• Shut down internet banking completely until the computer and phone are clean
• When the computer and phone are clean, change the internet banking username and password.
• It is also good practice to advise your bank that you authorize wires by signature only!

This email was sent on behalf of Mount Dora Area Chamber of Commerce 341 Alexander St. Mount Dora, FL 32757.

 

Follow up by Vance Jochim, a retired Certified Fraud Examiner

• Never give out your full EIN or other data if you cannot confirm the legitimacy and location of the caller.
• The *72 and *73 routine was to get the business owner to setup forwarding all his outbound calls to a specific number. Then I bet if he tried dialing his bank, he would get a scammer saying it was the bank and this was used to delay him reporting suspicions to the bank or a card company.
• I will follow up to see if the Mt. Dora police or Sheriff actually do anything.
• As an aside the person who sent me this email did not remove the bottom Chamber statement that allowed the recipient to unsubscribe her email notifications, so I could have unsubscribed her from the Chamber email list. I did however, remove the unsubscribe link. 
• Also, search Google images for "Bank Scam" and check out some of the articles to protect yourself

Vance Jochim

FiscalRangers.com