Jessica Quindlen: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Sound Cents podcast. I'm Jessica Quindlen. Today we're doing our midyear “fraudcast” check in. I have Angie Maestas, our Manager of Card Fraud. Hello, Angie.
Angie Maestas: Hello.
Jessica Quindlen: And LaShae Woodard, our VP of Financial Crimes. Hello, LaShae.
LaShae Woodard: Hello.
Jessica Quindlen: So let's just get started with a quick refresher. Tell me the difference between fraud and a scam.
Angie Maestas: A fraudulent transaction is when you've never done business with a merchant and the transactions weren't initiated by you. You didn't know anything about it. A scam is when a fraudster gains your trust by pretending to be someone that they're not, and they trick you into doing a transaction, which you think is for a legitimate reason, but it actually sends the funds to the fraudster.
Jessica Quindlen: Thank you. What are some common types of fraud and then some common types of scams?
LaShae Woodard: We see a lot of romance scams where maybe they'll be on a dating website, and they'll meet someone and then they just communicate outside of the dating site back and forth.
Sometimes [00:01:00] people will reach out if you post on a social media site, sometimes people will reach out to you from your post. We see job scams where they'll say, “Oh, I'm looking for a personal assistant and of course the pay is the best pay you'll ever see.” And you know, it makes it too good to be true.
A lot of times we'll see where they pretend to be someone you know or someone you're associated with. So, they may pretend that they're Ent trying to reach out to you. They may pretend to be your insurance company. They'll try and pretend that it's someone that you know, in order for you to really want to be engaged with them to determine, you know, if something bad happened.
Jessica Quindlen: So what about specifically fraud?
LaShae Woodard: Fraud? We see a lot of skimming devices, stolen cards stolen mail, where they'll drop it in the mail box if it is not attached to a building, and someone got into the box and steals that.
Jessica Quindlen: Okay.
LaShae Woodard: So we'll see some of that. I don't think people really write that many checks anymore, but enough for us to still see it.
Jessica Quindlen: Yeah. You still come across it. [00:02:00] I know we've sort of listed these common types. What are sort of the latest hot scams that we're seeing these days?
Angie Maestas: It's the same as what Lachey said, and I think that we see them kind of constantly, but what they do is they change their verbiage, or they try and be more relevant using new social medias with the same type of goal in mind. It's still the romance scams, job scams that we're really seeing.
Jessica Quindlen: Anything specific for credit cards?
Angie Maestas: You know, I think that we are constantly combating online fraud as well as trying to stay ahead of fraudsters putting skimming devices on machines to try and steal card information that way.
Jessica Quindlen: So what should someone do if they think they've been targeted by a scam?
LaShae Woodard: The first thing you should do is determine what information did you give out. Did you believe you were talking to the credit union, and you gave your online banking username and password? Did you believe you were talking to, you know, your childhood friend, and you gave them access?
You just need to determine what exactly did you give out. If you gave out any of your account [00:03:00] information, you'll need to go in the best you can to block that. If you gave out your debit card information, you can go online and block your card. They can't go back in and unblock it. If you just gave out basic information, I would still reach out to your financial institution.
Especially if you gave out personal identifying information, your social, your date of birth, passwords, things like that. You just need to notify your institution that, “I think I may have compromised my personal identifying information.” Let’s us know to put a warning on your account that you could be a victim of identity theft in case they call in and pretend to be you. If you've given out passwords in any of those, log in, change it, and you should be good. But I'll truly want you to reach out to your institution and notify them.
Jessica Quindlen: How do credit unions specifically protect their members from fraud?
Angie Maestas: You know, as credit unions, our members are why we're here. And our best successes are when we're being cooperative.
So part of that commitment is to just be the [00:04:00] best in our field. We join webinars, meetings, conferences with other financial institutions, law enforcement, even merchants to try and figure out the new fraud schemes that are out there, different tactics on how to combat it, stay ahead of it so that we're doing what's best for our members.
Jessica Quindlen: I love that. So, we previously had mentioned social media. Let's dive into that a little bit more. How specifically do social media platforms play a role in sort of helping to facilitate these scam artists?
LaShae Woodard: You never know who you're talking to online. You might get a friend request and you're like, “Oh, I work with her.”
There's no way to verify. So you could be talking to someone that you think you know, and it really isn't that person. They could have had their account taken over. Or someone could have just created a fake account. We've seen instances too where they're like, oh, they're friends with someone I know.
There are some people that accept a friend request from anyone. They like to get those friend numbers up there. So just because they're friends with someone you know, doesn't mean that they're a friend of yours. They may not [00:05:00] even know that person really well. So it's just better to be safe.
Keep your friend groups to who you know, but also too, it's so quick and social media, you'll see someone make a post, and then that person could private message them, send them a message and you know, we've had cases where they follow a famous person online and then lo and behold they get a message from that famous person. It's someone who's trolling their comments and is attempting to establish that they're trying to pretend to be this famous person and you think that's who you're chatting with and it's generally not.
Jessica Quindlen: Wow. So what are some of the psychological tactics that scammers use to trick their victims?
Angie Maestas: Yeah. So we see a couple of different types of tactics that they use. So one of the biggest ones is creating a sense of urgency, making you feel pressured to make a decision really quickly. I think none of us make the best decisions when we're doing it without the ability to process it and think it through, think of all the goods and the bad.
So if they can get you to make a decision really quickly, [00:06:00] that's their best way of going about it. The other thing that we see with them is they start to build rapport with you. So maybe they have added you as a friend on social media or you thought you knew them, so they start small talk and then they build up to you trusting them and then they'll ask for something small until you feel like you've got this sense of loyalty. Then all of a sudden they're asking for more and more and more, it's harder to say no with somebody you feel like you know.
The other thing is they'll appeal to your sense of obeying authority. If they pretend to be somebody in a position of power, we're more likely to follow that because we want to follow the rules. We want to make sure that we're not getting ourselves in trouble. So, if they appeal to your sense of wanting to stay out of trouble, your appeal to authority, then they have another option to get funds from you just because you want to do the right thing.
Jessica Quindlen: So how can one verify the authenticity of an email or a phone call from a supposed trusted entity?
LaShae Woodard: When it comes to phone calls, if one of our investigators reaches out to a member, feel free to say, this isn't a great time, can I call you [00:07:00] right back? Ask for their extension. Call us back at the number that you know belongs to us. Type in that extension, you will get that person. When they spoof a phone number and they call you, they don't have the ability to then receive your call, even though it appears as if they're calling from one of our numbers. But feel free to say, “What's your extension? I'll call you back,” and then we'll gladly give out our extension and wait for the call back. And that way you know that we work here.
When it comes to email addresses, it's really easy for scammers. For example, if your email address is jane@workplace.com to mimic that they'll do jane.@workplace.com.
We've seen where it won't even be a “.com” or a “.org.” It'll be Outlook and we're like generally businesses don't use an Outlook email as their email. Sometimes they'll hack into emails and then reply back as if they're that person, but they'll still make that change because they want to be the [00:08:00] receivers.
So look at your email addresses, make sure that there's nothing been added to them. They're really good at making such a small change that you wouldn't notice. They may drop a letter from a last name, drop a letter from the first name and it's hard to catch, but always, if you get an email, you don't understand it, call them at the number that you know belongs to them and verify that they did indeed send you an email.
Jessica Quindlen: Is there a particular time of year when scams are more prevalent?
Angie Maestas: Not necessarily. Scams are always prevalent. They're always looking for opportunities to take advantage of people who are feeling rushed, who are feeling desperate. I know on our end, we see an uptick during holidays. And the reason isn't that there's more scams, it's that there's more people out shopping, looking for the hottest ticket item at the very best deal that they can find it. So looking at online ads, maybe not the most reputable site, to get the best thing for the best price.
Jessica Quindlen: That makes sense. I think [00:09:00] too, there's so much happening at the holidays. I feel like I have packages coming four times a day and I'm sending to this and sending that it would be so easy for someone to text me and say something and me just not even think there's so much chaos,
Angie Maestas: So much chao. We've got parties to plan for and cooking to do. And we just need to get that item and get it quickly and get it wrapped in under the tree. And they are really taking advantage of that during those times.
Jessica Quindlen: So switching gears a little bit from personal, how can small business owners protect themselves from fraud and scams?
LaShae Woodard: If they're doing online sales, they just need to be careful of who may want to purchase from them. If you normally sell two or three items per person, if someone wants to make a large purchase, that's out of the norm, and if they want to send you a check or they're sending you extra for shipping, be cautious of that. I wouldn't take an order for someone who wants to overpay you that you might return funds or send funds to someone else.
A lot of times they'll send a counterfeit [00:10:00] item, you deposit it, then magically, they don't want to do business with you anymore. So they ask you to send the funds back. If you send the funds back, you're still responsible for the original item you deposited that could return.
Also does it make sense, we'll have someone, well I was working with John Smith at a shipping company and the check came from a vet office. Does that make sense? Chances are that that check may be counterfeit. So does the check that you've received match the person that you were doing business with? That's a red flag if it does not.
Jessica Quindlen: So how can individuals stay informed about the latest scams and fraud tactics outside of this podcast episode?
Angie Maestas: So actually, on our website, if you go to Ent.com under the Financial Education tab and Privacy and Security, all of the different types of scams. There's different articles about different things going on out there. We keep that information.
Jessica Quindlen: Awesome, and we do have that linked in the show notes and I'll specifically link our security articles. [00:11:00] Anything else to add for our midyear fraud check in?
LaShae Woodard: No, just as a reminder if someone reaches out to you, if you receive something and you're not sure, reach out to your credit union. We can help do some background work for you to see if it's legit or not. Protect your personal information as if you would protect your cash.
Angie Maestas: Yeah, I think, you know, trust your gut. I think after a bad situation happens, you think to yourself, something didn't feel right. And that was that gut feeling telling you something wasn't right. Trust your gut, double check it, do some research, take your time.
Jessica Quindlen: Well, that brings us to the end of our show. Angie, LaShae, thanks so much for being here. It was wonderful having you.
Angie Maestas: Thanks so much for having us.
Jessica Quindlen: Thank you for listening to Sound Cents from Ent Credit Union. Be sure to follow our podcast as well as rate and review us. I'm Jessica Quinlan. I will see you in two weeks, same time, same place.
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