Watch Out for Catfishing

Catfishing is when someone presents themselves online as someone else to trick people into befriending them and giving them money. They may take months to establish a friendship or an online dating relationship. Then they’ll make innocent requests, like asking for help covering a medical bill, or telling you they’re having a hard time making some other type of payment. They’ll ask if they can pay you and have you make a payment on their behalf, but their payment to you will be fraudulent and you’ll be out the money.
I have spent time helping our customers with fraud cases, knowing that they don’t want to believe it’s real. The scammers have played to their emotions, or they pretend to be in romantic relationships. Whatever it is that person needs, the scammer will figure it out. The fraudsters are so good at earning trust, but in the end things never end up well.

Know the Red Flags

There are usually some consistent warning signs when someone is being defrauded. Here are a few things I tell my customers to look for:

• If you are doing a job or doing someone a favor for a lot of money and it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably a scam.
• We’re seeing a lot of scams that involve emotional decisions, like a request for help with medical bills, a family member in trouble or buying a puppy. Be careful not to let your heart get in the way.
• Watch for elements of transferring money, such as someone asking you to pay for something, and then they’ll compensate you or transfer your reimbursement.
• Be very cautious if someone warns you not to tell your friends or your banker about any financial arrangement they are requesting, That’s a huge signal that they’re up to something fraudulent.
• Do not give your banking information to anyone, this includes your online banking credentials.

If you think you could be dealing with fraudulent activity, please reach out to us, we are happy to help.

The post Warning Signs of Financial Fraud first appeared on Bridge Pioneers.

You might be able to get your money back after you’ve been scammed.
What you should do, and whether you’ll get a refund, depends on what happened.

If there’s an unknown payment from your account

Contact your bank immediately if:

• there’s a payment from your bank account you don’t recognise – this is known as an ‘unauthorised transaction’
• you’ve used your debit card and more money was taken than you expected

Explain what’s happened and ask if you can get a refund. If you’re not happy with how the bank deals with your claim, you can complain to them. Find out how to do this by checking their website.
If it’s been 8 weeks since you complained, and you haven’t got your money back, contact the Bridge Pioneers. You can also contact Bridge Pioneers if you’ve had a letter from the bank saying it’s not going to take any action. This is sometimes known as a final response letter.
If Bridge Pioneers decides you’ve been treated unfairly, it’s got legal powers to put things right.

If you can’t get your money back

Find out how to get emotional support after a scam.
If you need help with debt, reach out to us to help you recover your stolen funds.

Report the scam

It’s a good idea to report the scam – even if you haven’t got your money back yet. Find out how to report a scam.

The post Check if you can get your money back after a scam first appeared on Bridge Pioneers.

Scamming is rampant. More than 40,000 people filed scam reports with the Better Business Bureau in 2022, and the median reported dollar loss was $171, according to that year’s BBB Scam Tracker Risk Report. A lot of those scams are targeting your bank accounts.
And though federal law limits liability for credit card fraud, it’s not the same for bank scams, such as being given a fake check you deposit and then send part of the amount to a fraudster.
“You are responsible for any deposits made to your account,” says Liz Cackowski, a certified financial crimes investigator and senior fraud investigator for Republic Bank.
Luckily, you can protect yourself and your bank account by learning how to identify six common bank scams.

Check Overpayment Scams

Check overpayment fraud is a popular scam that targets sellers from online auctions and classified advertisement websites. During a transaction, the scammer will pay the seller with a bogus check for more than the amount of the item. The scammer will then ask the seller to wire the difference back after making the deposit. The seller will be out not only a returned item fee from the bank, but also whatever cash the supposed buyer received.
How to avoid this scam: Independently verify a buyer’s name, address and phone number. A check that comes from an unknown party should be a red flag, Cackowski says. If you are selling an item to someone in Ohio, but the check lists the name of a dental office in the District of Columbia, the payment may not be legitimate. Regardless of how insistent a buyer may be, never cash a check and immediately wire money from it. Talk to your bank if you have any concerns about a payment you receive.

Credit Card and Bank Account Scams

You may get emails or calls from someone who claims to be from your credit card issuer or bank. The messages may ask you to call back to discuss a problem or to click on a link to update your account information. In some cases, scammers may even claim they are investigating possible fraud on your account and ask for details such as your account number or Social Security number to investigate further. These are all attempts to get you to hand over sensitive information.

How to avoid this scam: Do not click on any email links or attachments. Scam phone messages may include a callback number, but you should ignore that. “Don’t call the number they gave you. Call the number you have,” says Michael Foguth, president and founder of advisory firm Foguth Financial Group in Brighton, Michigan. Otherwise, you could find yourself on the phone with the scammer rather than a bank representative.

Charity Scams

Not everyone asking for a charitable donation may be on the up and up. “Fraudsters are out there, and they do prey on people’s good intentions,” says Caleb Barnum of Sydney-based Integrated Research. For example, you could receive a call asking for donations to the local police department or to military families. The crooks elicit information about your bank account or debit card to make the donation over the phone, giving them full access to your checking account.
How to avoid this scam: To make sure your good intentions don’t go to waste, the safest way to give to a charity is by choosing an organization you know and trust. Also, be careful about sharing your personal information with people who reach out by telephone or email.

Online Lending Scams

Victims of these scams are often those who have trouble obtaining a bank loan. They may receive an email from a supposed lender or find a website offering easy access to money. “Because the victim thinks they are applying for a loan, they don’t think twice about providing sensitive information,” Cackowski says. After the scammer obtains bank account details, the victim may send a loan payment or direct deposit. The victim may also be asked to make an immediate good-faith payment, but as with the check overpayment scam, the “loan” is fraudulent.

How to avoid this scam: Always check reviews and the Better Business Bureau rating of any company offering a loan. If you can’t find reviews or ratings, the business may not be real.

Employment Scams

Younger adults are more likely to be the victims of employment scams than other age groups, the Better Business Bureau reports. In most of these scenarios, the crooks offer a job but request personal information or money for “training” or “equipment.”
How to avoid this scam: Never send money to a potential employer. You should not have to pay for equipment, background screening or, generally, the promise of work. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Award Scams

In these scams, you are typically told you’ve won a foreign lottery. Crooks will send you a large check to deposit into your personal checking account. You will then be asked to immediately wire a portion of the funds to pay for government taxes and administrative fees.
How to avoid this scam: If you didn’t enter the contest, then you didn’t win it. Note that if you participate in a foreign lottery via mail or phone, you are violating federal law. Also, U.S. lottery winners typically pay taxes on a lump-sum payment in the year the money was received or each year on installment payments.

Protecting Yourself From Bank Scams

Keep common scams in mind, and remember how to avoid them before you put your funds at risk. Most important, “Do not pay something (you didn’t initiate) over the phone,” Foguth says. “Just don’t do it.”

Scammers will continue to come up with creative ways to get into people’s bank accounts.
“They go after easy targets,” Barnum says. Criminals often look for people who are searching for jobs, dating, selling products and even do-gooders looking to help the needy.
What’s more, seniors are in the bull’s-eye for scams. “Unfortunately, that generation tends to be a very trusting generation,” Barnum notes.

Do Banks Refund Scammed Money?

Your bank may refund money from a scam depending on the type of scam and bank policies.
Contact your bank immediately if you suspect unauthorized transactions or money missing from your account, advises the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. You’ll need to notify your bank within 60 days after your bank sends your statement showing the unauthorized transactions. If you wait longer, you could owe the full amount of any transactions that occurred after the 60-day period and before notifying your bank, according to the CFPB.
Once you notify the bank, it has 10 business days to investigate the issue, and the bank has three business days to report its findings to you. If the bank can’t complete the investigation within 10 business days, it may issue a temporary credit to your account while it continues to investigate. The bank must then resolve the issue in 45 days, but in certain cases, you could wait up to 90 days.
With fraudulent checks, deposits could later be reversed, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. You’ll need to pursue the person who gave you the check if you want to be reimbursed.

If you think you have been the target of a scam or you have been scammed, you should Contact Us NOW!!!

The post 6 Scams That Target Your Bank Account first appeared on Bridge Pioneers.

It’s no secret that digital fraud attempts targeting online payment and financial accounts have jumped in the past two years, exacerbated by pandemic woes and a growth in e-commerce and digital financial services usage.
However, a recent study underscores that cybercriminals are also worming their way to ill-gotten gains by targeting shipping, mining consumer and business identities and phishing to access bank and credit accounts and other valued data and steal money online. The TransUnion study, the 2022 Global Digital Fraud Trends Report released Tuesday, found that financial services is one of the two industries (along with travel and leisure) worldwide seeing the greatest increase in the rate of suspected digital fraud attempts in the past two years.
In the United States, specifically, fraud attempts on financial services increased by more than 27% year over year — lower than the global growth rate of 33.5% of financial industry fraud efforts, but still enough to make it one of the five sectors to experience the greatest leap in fraudulent plays. (Gaming, travel and leisure, telecommunications and, interestingly, insurance were the other industries seeing the biggest growth in digital fraud ploys, “as consumer adoption of digital channels has continued to accelerate,” according to the TransUnion report.)
“Digital channels have become the ‘new normal’ in the financial services industry and with it, it has created new opportunities for fraudsters,” said Shai Cohen, senior vice president and global head of fraud solutions at TransUnion. “Many consumers are conducting the majority of their financial transactions online, and since this is where many consumers are spending both time and money, it makes financial institutions a prime target for fraud.”

These findings, based on TransUnion’s survey earlier this year of 12,500 adults around the world, certainly confirm what various industry experts have seen happening in the past two years as online banking and shopping have become widely embraced, even by digital laggards. Indeed, the rate for all types of digital fraud attempts worldwide rocketed up more than 52% between 2019 and 2021, according to TransUnion.
However, the report also found that so-called “shipping fraud” — where a bad actor posing as a legitimate buyer spoofs a shipping address, or a malfeasant seller collects payment for goods or services bought online, but never fulfills the purchase — is on an even more aggressive rise, according to TransUnion’s findings. The global information company, known for its consumer credit reporting, found that shipping fraud has become the “fastest growing type of digital fraud worldwide, increasing nearly 800 percent” in the past year, and more than 15 times over between 2019 and 2021.
As a result of this “new normal,” the financial, payments and retail industries have all experienced a boom in the acceptance of digital services, Cohen pointed out that “the propensity for shipping fraud has also increased.” Also related to this boost in financial interactions happening on the internet, the TransUnion report found that business identity theft (114% increase) and identity mining and phishing attempts (104%) more than doubled from 2020 to 2021. At least three out of five respondents to the TransUnion survey (62%) confessed that having their identity stolen was their greatest fear in terms of digital fraud.
And basic banking accounts and payments were not the only financially related industries that saw fraud bumped up by the rise in online usage, according to the report. One of the five most affected industries, the U.S. insurance industry, saw fraud attempts alone grow by more than 11% from 2020 to 2021; and, over the past two years, actual successful cases of identity theft among U.S. insurers — where a legitimate customer’s accounts are taken over, their data is stolen and the information is used to submit false claims — has grown a whopping 82% since 2019, according to Cohen.
While there is no way to completely eradicate fraud, or even to necessarily stem the rising tide of bad actors finding new ways to access accounts and impersonate real customers, Cohen said he believed there are steps financial institutions can take to “reduce fraud… [including] to detect suspicious patterns or attributes during the account opening and verification processes, in order to prevent fraudsters from getting in the door.”
He recommended implementing multi-layered identity solutions to “help build trust with customers and thwart these fraud tactics.”

The post Fraudsters target e-commerce first appeared on Bridge Pioneers.

If you think you’ve been scammed or there’s been an attempt to scam you, there are ways you can fight back.

1. Keep a paper trail

   Nitzsche recommends keeping records of all communication with the collectors. Takes notes on the date and time of every phone call, save emails and texts and gather letters and any other correspondence you receive from the company. If it is legal in your state, record any phone calls. The more information at your disposal, the stronger your complaint will be if you file a report.

2. Reach out to your state’s attorney general or Bridge Pioneers

   Your attorney general’s office is on the alert for scammers and aims to put a halt to fraud such as debt collector scams. Bridge Pioneers also aims to stop fraud and help victims of fraud.

3. Submit a complaint

   You can report a fake debt collection agency to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
   With major debt collection rule changes slated for November 30, 2021, one of the biggest changes is that debt collectors will be allowed to contact you through email, text message and social media direct messages, Nitzsche said.
   “There’s a really good chance that scams will increase with all of these new methods of communication, so be vigilant and remember your rights.”

Bottom line

If a debt collection agency contacts you, do your research before agreeing to repay what you allegedly owe. Start by confirming you owe the debt, as you could be dealing with a scammer looking to prey on innocent consumers. Also, familiarize yourself with common tactics used by scammers, and if you find that you’re dealing with a fraudster, file a report with your state attorney general’s office, the FTC and the CFPB.
But if you determine that the debt does belong to you, know your rights when dealing with debt collectors and file a complaint promptly if they’re violated.

The post How to report fake debt collectors first appeared on Bridge Pioneers.

If you’re worried about becoming a victim of debt collector scams, here’s how you can protect yourself, your bank account and your personal information:

1. Contact your creditor

   Track the source of the debt by reaching out to your creditor to see if it has any information about the debt in question. If the company that contacted you matches what your creditor has on file, you’ll know it’s a legit debt collector.
   Always ask for a validation letter or confirmation about the debt. That way, if you do receive fake debt collection letters, you’ll be able to check them against the legit one from the actual collection agency.

2. Check your credit report

   Look at your credit reports to see if the debt the collector is referring to is on your report.
   While most debt is reported, not all debt collectors relay information to the credit bureaus. The debt could still be yours but not show up on your credit report. In this case, you may need to do more research to look into the alleged debt.

3. Don’t disclose any financial information

   When someone asks for personal and financial information, don’t share anything the potential scammer doesn’t already know. Instead, ask for the caller’s name, the collection company and contact information such as a phone number or email address and its physical address.
   If the collector is willing to provide information, that’s a good sign. Next, try to call the company or send it an email. If you get a dead line or the email bounces back, that’s a red flag. Save any discussion of your financial or personal information until you have verified that the debt collector is legitimate.

4. Stay calm and know your rights

   Dealing with a debt in collections can be stressful and embarrassing, but don’t be hasty, Nitzsche says.
   “A legitimate debt collector should be able to provide you with documentation that shows where the debt came from, when they acquired it and how they arrived at your current balance,” he says. “Always ask for this verification as soon as collection attempts begin.”
   Under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, legitimate collectors must identify themselves and can’t try to contact you at any unusual time or place. They also can’t communicate with anyone about your debt except for your attorney, the attorney for your creditor or the collection agency and, in some cases, a consumer reporting agency.
   It’s also helpful to know your state’s statute of limitations on debt, Nitzsche says. This can be anywhere from three to 10 years. “If the debt they claim you owe — legitimate or not — is beyond the statute of limitations, the collector can attempt to collect but cannot sue you,” he says.

The post 4 ways to protect yourself from debt collection scams first appeared on Bridge Pioneers.