Protecting Your Personal Finances From Fraud

[Cooper]

Everyday I’m reading horror stories of how unsuspecting people’s life savings are stolen right from their bank accounts.

Today there was a story of a young couple saving for a wedding. A call from their bank (caller ID said Chase)  asking if they made any wire transfers from this account (caller had acc’t number & SS#). The couple had no reason to believe this was a scam. To reverse these transfers they were told they had to wire it back to their account. Next thing they knew, all their savings were gone. They had been scammed. Chase declined to help because they had authorized this wire transfer. 

What can people do to avoid these scams. The story went on to say if you get a call from a bank or money institution, hang up and call the bank to confirm. 

Have any of you received suspicious calls like these? Did you ever lose any money? If so, what action did you take. 

[+ FrankR]

20 minutes ago, Cooper said:

Everyday I’m reading horror stories of how unsuspecting people’s life savings are stolen right from their bank accounts.

Today there was a story of a young couple saving for a wedding. A call from their bank (caller ID said Chase)  asking if they made any wire transfers from this account (caller had acc’t number & SS#). The couple had no reason to believe this was a scam. To reverse these transfers they were told they had to wire it back to their account. Next thing they knew, all their savings were gone. They had been scammed. Chase declined to help because they had authorized this wire transfer. 

What can people do to avoid these scams. The story went on to say if you get a call from a bank or money institution, hang up and call the bank to confirm. 

Have any of you received suspicious calls like these? Did you ever lose any money? If so, what action did you take. 

I have gotten calls from banks, the IRS and Amazon - all scams.  My standard advice to friends, clients and my parents: don’t talk to anyone that calls you or email you. Dead stop. Call the number on the back of your card or the number on your statement. Have them do a proper authentication before you discuss any details.

[mike carey]

1 hour ago, FrankR said:

I have gotten calls from banks, the IRS and Amazon - all scams.  My standard advice to friends, clients and my parents: don’t talk to anyone that calls you or email you. Dead stop. Call the number on the back of your card or the number on your statement. Have them do a proper authentication before you discuss any details.

Also, bear in mind that even if you hang up it's possible for the scammer to keep the line open so when you try to call a known number for the bank the scammer will be the one that takes the call. So call your bank from a different phone. (I'm sure it's possible to disconnect their call [maybe call someone else and if that works you can infer that the scam call has been disconnected, but don't quote me on that] if you don't have an alternate phone.)

[+ Vegas_Millennial]

2 hours ago, Cooper said:

Everyday I’m reading horror stories of how unsuspecting people’s life savings are stolen right from their bank accounts.

Today there was a story of a young couple saving for a wedding. A call from their bank (caller ID said Chase)  asking if they made any wire transfers from this account (caller had acc’t number & SS#). The couple had no reason to believe this was a scam. To reverse these transfers they were told they had to wire it back to their account. Next thing they knew, all their savings were gone. They had been scammed. Chase declined to help because they had authorized this wire transfer. 

What can people do to avoid these scams. The story went on to say if you get a call from a bank or money institution, hang up and call the bank to confirm. 

Have any of you received suspicious calls like these? Did you ever lose any money? If so, what action did you take. 

I do all my banking in person at a physical bank.  I might be missing a few pennies by not using the InterWeb for banking, but I'm making up for it in risk avoidance and less worries about fraud.

[+ augustus]

7 hours ago, Cooper said:

Chase declined to help because they had authorized this wire transfer. 

Yes, the bank will not be responsible IF you give information or assist the scammers in accessing your money.  It's called a "victim assisted scam".  Here's a recent story from NJ about a woman that lost her life savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars.  She had let the scammers access her computer.

Woman, 81, gets scammed out of $420K. Now she may lose her home.

WWW.NJ.COM

---

After a con artist got into her computer, a lifetime of savings vanished.

 

Edited August 23, 2023 by augustus

[+ augustus]

Use 2 factor authorization on all accounts too.  I have that for my Fidelity account and also have the wire transfer feature disabled.  I can enable it at any time if I need to make a wire transfer and then disable it again.  Also, a bank will never call you up and ask for your account number, social security number, etc.  

Edited August 23, 2023 by augustus

[handiacefailure]

On 8/23/2023 at 7:57 AM, FrankR said:

I have gotten calls from banks, the IRS and Amazon - all scams.  My standard advice to friends, clients and my parents: don’t talk to anyone that calls you or email you. Dead stop. Call the number on the back of your card or the number on your statement. Have them do a proper authentication before you discuss any details.

The IRS will never contact you by phone.   It's always via snail mail.

 

And never wire money to anyone.   A wire is non reversable.  

[handiacefailure]

I wire a couple times a month for our company and they have a series of questions you have to answer and one if anyone contact you on the internet or if you were promised funds if you execute the wire.

The branch manager said he has had people answer yes and they encourage the people not to send the wire but a couple people have insisted

If someone is offering you a lot of money and demanding you wire the fee, wouldn't common sense tell them they'd take the fee out of the settlement