How to Be Aware of Scams

Jessica Quindlen: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Sound Cents Podcast. I'm Jessica Quindlen. Today we're discussing financial fraud and scams. I have with us one of our Managers of Financial Crimes. Lisa Zuercher, how are you?

Lisa Zurcher: Hi, good. How are you?

Jessica Quindlen: I'm good.

Lisa Zurcher: Thanks for having us.

Jessica Quindlen: Of course. And our Vice President of Financial Crimes, LaShae Woodard. How are you, LaShae?

LaShae Woodard: I am wonderful. We're excited to be here.

Jessica Quindlen: Yes, me too. So, let's just start off LaShae, I'll kick this first one to you. What are some tools to just spot, fight and prevent fraud?

LaShae Woodard: The main thing to look at is if you receive a text or an email of some kind, and they want you to act fast. They're just trying to hurry up and get you to do something before you have a chance to either say, “that doesn't sound right,” or maybe reach out to a friend to determine if it sounds right to them. So, they have this immediate urgency, you know, dangerous, something bad is going to happen, maybe someone's going to get hurt, someone's in jail. So, they have an immediate need for you to act upon their request. Also, if they're threatening legal action [00:01:00] against you that this will happen. You'll go to jail, you'll be fined. Things that might have a grave consequence that you don't want to occur. That's another red flag.

Also is if they ask you to pay for something with gift cards or in Bitcoin, any type of cryptocurrency that's usually putting it in a place that they have access to that you'll not be able to recover the funds, that's a red flag as well. You do not pay fines to public offices in Bitcoin, gift cards, cryptocurrency of any kind. That's not how the government will accept a payment, including taxes. That's not how the government will accept a payment from someone who owes them money.

Jessica Quindlen: Right. So, Lisa, when we are, you know, calling in or being called from an institution or someone pretending to be an institution, what are out of the wallet questions? What is that?

Lisa Zurcher: So basically, that's going to be a [00:02:00] question that someone - scammer, fraudster or someone off the street - is not going to know. It's more of the personal information. So, let's say that you know, we can look through transaction history and say, “Hey, tell us where you used your debit card yesterday.”

And they can give us that information. If they previously had a car loan with us, tell us what kind of car that was. Year, make, model. We can look for something that they're not going to find on their credit report. Let's say if they had, if there was a breach somewhere, now they've got all this information, they can look at a credit report, it's going to be something that's not on the credit report. And you know, we may also ask for, “Hey, you have a debit card with us. What's the image on the debit card?” Something that a fraudster is not going to know. It's going to be hard to try and guess.

And sometimes we have what we call red herring questions, which is kind of like a trick question. So, let's say we ask a member that's never had a mortgage with us, “tell us the address where your mortgage is.” And if they're like “I’ve never had a mortgage with you guys” We’ll know, okay, [00:03:00] we're talking to the member.

Jessica Quindlen: Oh, okay. Awesome. So, it sounds like too, it really gets its name out of the wallet from if you take my wallet for the most part, you're not going to be able to answer these questions.

Lisa Zurcher: Exactly.

Jessica Quindlen: And similar to, I feel like when you're online and you have those authentications that are like, what's your first car? What is your grandmother's second cousin's maiden name? You know, things like that that are very specific.

Okay, fantastic. So LaShae, what will a financial institution never ask me for? What is just something that I know immediately this is fraud?

LaShae Woodard: We will never ask you for your debit card pin number. We do not have access to it. We do not know what it is. But if your card has been compromised in some way, a scammer wants that pin number from you, so they can use your card.

Jessica Quindlen: Okay.

LaShae Woodard: Another thing we don't ask over the phone is your full social security number. We would like for our members if they had a call center password to use that. If not, we may ask for the last four or other identifying information, [00:04:00] but you need to be cautious of giving your social security number out over the phone to anyone.

A well-known scam from the Social Security Office is they will call and pretend to be the Social Security Office and ask you to verify your social security number. When you give it, they hang up. That's because they already know your name and now, they have your social right.

So, I would never give that over the phone. If you receive a text of any kind from a company, completely read that text. A lot of times it's a way that only you, the person should know that. For example, for Ent, if you set up a virtual wallet, you are the only one who will get that pin number. If you give that to someone else, they can now set up your card in their virtual wallet on their phone. And when we send it out, it comes with a warning that says, do not give this pin number out, including to employees. [00:05:00] That means every employee. We work in financial crimes; we will never ask you for that.

Jessica Quindlen: Okay, perfect. So, the last four of your social is fine, but the rest is a correct super big red flag. Okay, good to know.

Lisa Zurcher: Just to jump in really quick too, we'll never ask for a full debit card number.

Jessica Quindlen: Okay. That's good to know.

Lisa Zurcher: Sometimes that's a red flag for us if we've got someone calling in saying, I don't have my account number, but here's my full debit card number. We don't ever look accounts up by your full debit card number nor will we ever ask for the full debit card number.

Jessica Quindlen: Would you ask for an account number ever?

Lisa Zurcher: Yes, we would ask for account number, just not the full debit card number.

Jessica Quindlen: That's great to know though because I think that's such an easy, especially when you're fearful, you think you're going to be arrested or all your money's gone and you're just like, here's my social, save it. And then your money's gone.

Lisa Zurcher: And then they try to and say, well, just to verify you, let me have your full debit card number.

Jessica Quindlen: Right. Kind of with those out of wallet questions. That's let me verify your identity even though you called me kind of thing.

Lisa Zurcher: Yeah, yeah. As you're saying it, they're writing it down and, okay, just verify that pin number. Okay. Write that down [00:06:00] and that's where it begins, unfortunately.

Jessica Quindlen: All right. So, building on this conversation, what are some easy do's and don'ts aside from don't get out your pin, don't get out, your social. What are some other just very easy things that we cannot do and do to protect ourselves?

Lisa Zurcher: Be very, very careful with text or emails that you receive. Some text messages, which we call smishing, is where they will send a text message saying, “Hey, we've seen an unauthorized charge on your account, click this link.” And the link has nothing to do with our institution, but when you click on the link, they've got a spoofed website that mirrors our actual website.

So, when you go in to put your online credentials, now they have all that to log into our real site. So be really careful when clicking on the text. You know, we tell our members, don't click the link at all in the text. Go to our website, log into your online banking from there to look at charges or just give us a call.

Or if you're not comfortable calling, come to a service center. We'll be happy to help you. Same with emails. A lot of emails, you can look at the [00:07:00] URL in the actual email body, and then you can see where it's coming from. If you just hover over the from address to see is it coming from a real Ent address. Sometimes they're really sneaky and they'll maybe misspell something by one letter or add a letter or something where you may not catch it. So that's a good way to see is it really sending me something or is it someone else?

Please, please, please do not leave your checkbooks in your cars in your glove box. It's amazing how many calls we get a week about people that have had their checkbooks stolen from there.

That's a good way to keep from having checks stolen. I think LaShae had a cop one time say that every purse stolen was under a blanket in the back of their car or a coat. The coat was thrown over it thinking that was going to hide it.

Jessica Quindlen: Oh, I've totally done that.

LaShae Woodard: We believe it looks like we nonchalantly placed our coat or blanket in the back of the car.

Jessica Quindlen: Fully spread out on top. Listen, I've done it, so I'll own that.

Lisa Zurcher: But fraudsters know that, and they will [00:08:00] lift blankets and jackets to look for those purses. So, if you know, you're on a hike or just running into the grocery store really quick for something, just bring it with you.

Of course, like we just talked about, never giving any personal information over the phone. We will never ask for full socials, full date of births. We may do that with verifying along with the call center password, but we're not going to ask for all of your personal online banking information, online banking passwords, nothing like that.

Jessica Quindlen: Right. And just to verify too, when you're verifying with call center password or these questions we've called you, right? Not you? Or will you call us and also verify that I am who I am?

Lisa Zurcher: Yes. So, what will happen is if they call into the call center, the call center will verify.

Jessica Quindlen: Which makes sense because we have called the institution, we've called this number. But if Ent actually is calling me or another financial institution, how much of a verification process is there? Because a lot of these scams and fraud they are calling us and yet need to verify who we are, even though you called. So that's why I'm [00:09:00] just curious.

Lisa Zurcher: Yeah. And sometimes we will call members. But we're not going to immediately go into verifying them. Because that looks a little suspicious if someone's calling me saying, all of a sudden now you need my last four of my social, or you need my date of birth.

Jessica Quindlen: Right. And you haven't really even told me why you're calling me.

Lisa Zurcher: Right. So that is a little suspicious. So, we kind of play that on a case-by-case basis based on, what information we're looking for from the member. But 9 times out of 10, the financial crimes department is calling back from a member who has called us. So, we're just reaching back out to them. And then also use chip readers as much as possible.

Jessica Quindlen: Like, versus swiping?

Lisa Zurcher: Versus swiping, yeah. Chip cards cannot be counterfeit, so if you can use the tap to pay or the chip it's much, much harder to try and counterfeit that.

LaShae Woodard: Another good reminder is if you carry a purse or a wallet, look in your wallet periodically and see what's in there.

Do you know should your purse or wallet be stolen? Do you have to carry all 10 of your credit cards with you? Can you lock some up in [00:10:00] a safe place? And I always recommend take your social security card out of your wallet. It's rare situations that you would need to present your actual card.

If you're just coming, going to work, the odds of you needing your actual card, if you know your number by heart, that usually in 9 out of 10 cases, you just need to know your social. You don't generally have to prove with the actual card that that's your social. That is definitely something you don't want a purse snatcher to have in their possession is your actual card.

Jessica Quindlen: All right, so no social security cards. Check your wallet periodically. And I agree, like do you need all of your cards and all of your everything? Do you have a recommended amount or is it sort of every person's different, which cards they need?

LaShae Woodard: Every person would be different. Make sure if you do leave them at home, they're secure. You know, you also don't want to have the reverse that I have all my cards sitting in my kitchen drawer. [00:11:00] Someone breaks into my house and now all my cards are in my kitchen drawer. So, you want to make sure they're secure at home. We've had cases sometimes where, you know, people will have company and stumble upon the stuff you've hidden.

Jessica Quindlen: That's unfortunate but believable. So, what are some current scams that are happening today? Or this month?

Lisa Zurcher: So, the social engineering scams, which are like romance scams unfortunately, are always a big topic. Be really, really careful who you meet online. Try and do your research. Reverse the Google image that you see maybe off Instagram or Twitter or Facebook or whatever it may be, because you might be able to find that same picture has multiple different names. So that could be an indicator that who you think you're talking to is not an actual real person. You know, if they say that all of a sudden, they had to go out of the country for a job and now they don't have access to their funds and they need you to wire funds, that's a huge red flag. So yeah, be really careful with who you talk to [00:12:00] online, especially if you don't meet them in person.

LaShae Woodard: There's also the buying and selling of stuff online. You're selling something, an item a car or whatever it is online and I'm selling it for a certain amount and a crazy high offer comes in. That's because the offer is generally not legit. They'll say, I'm going to send you over the amount, and I need you to send the difference to the shipper of the item. And then so now you've just sent them a portion of the check they sent you. So, we see that. We always caution people, local pickup, have them pay in cash. Just be cautious of who you may accept a check from.

Jessica Quindlen: Wow. Are there any scams that we're seeing that are hitting a younger audience or younger targets?

Lisa Zurcher: Yes. There's a lot of scams going on through social media, such as Instagram. A big one that we've seen is the scammers will reach out to people saying, “Hey, we'd like to pay you for your artwork,” or “We'd like to pay you to model for [00:13:00] us,” or, “we really like the pictures you've taken. We want to pay you for that.” And so, they'll send them a check for $2,000 and tell them to send, you know, $1,000 back for supplies. Of course. The whole check is fake.

Jessica Quindlen: So, but they send $1,000 before the $2,000 is cleared,

Lisa Zurcher: Right. Yes, exactly. So

Jessica Quindlen: Are they hitting minors?

Lisa Zurcher: Oh, yeah. Yeah. We've seen as young as 15. So, there are a lot of scams that go on through social media. We had one young girl thought she was investing through TikTok and unfortunately that was not the case. So, they're reaching out through all avenues to get through to these kids. And so, it's really important to make sure that kids are educated on what's going on as well.

Spoofing is always big. I don't think that's ever stopped, unfortunately. It's easy for these fraudsters to spoof our phone numbers as well as our email address, so members truly think that they're speaking to us.

And you know, Ent has got such a great [00:14:00] member base and very trusting members. But they believe that they're actually speaking to someone in our fraud department, and so they trust us with their information. And unfortunately, they're not talking to us.

Jessica Quindlen: Right. And that's why those red flags are so important. We are not asking for a pin. We will not ask for social. We're not going to ask for your debit card number. All those things are just so vital. Is there anything else we'd like to add on today's discussion?

Lisa Zurcher: Well, we just found out about a new scam called jugging.

Jessica Quindlen: What?

Lisa Zurcher: I don't know how these...

Jessica Quindlen: Who names them? That's what I want to know.

LaShae Woodard: The fraud world is full of made-up words. The importance of jugging is they will follow you from an ATM to steal from you. They might follow you out of a store to take from you.

Jessica Quindlen: Oh no.

LaShae Woodard: The lesson learned for that is always be aware of your surroundings. If you go to the ATM, don't leave your cash sitting on the seat. You know, if you pull up in an ATM and you see people just hanging out, it's okay to just drive past that machine, hit another machine, circle around. You can [00:15:00] always get cash back from a purchase. If you're not comfortable at the machine and there might be people loitering around drive away.

Jessica Quindlen: Yeah. It's not worth it. Are they, I'm a little scared to ask this question, but are they attacking people or is it their following and just stealing because they left their cash on the front seat and then went into the gas station?

LaShae Woodard: It’s a robbery.

Jessica Quindlen: So, this is happening a lot at ATMs, but also like just from stores?

Lisa Zurcher: Yeah, stores. They'll follow unsuspecting people from stores.

Jessica Quindlen: And like take whatever they just purchased kind of thing?

Lisa Zurcher: Mm-hmm. Or if they're in the car, they've been known to bust out the car windows to get what they want. They're very, very brave.

LaShae Woodard: As you walk out the store, when you make a purchase, have your keys in your hand, everything away. They like to target people who've got cell phones, car keys, purchases. You've just got a lot going on and they're just going to approach you and relieve you some of the items in your hand.

Jessica Quindlen: Lovely. All right. Well, anything else we'd like to [00:16:00] add to this very happy ending we have?

Lisa Zurcher: I think just the overall message is just be really careful with who you're speaking to and who you give your information out to. Fraud is a big business and it pays really well. And so, these people are not going to go anywhere and they're not going to stop. Just as we think we're getting a little bit ahead, they're getting further ahead and they're coming up with new ways.

Jessica Quindlen: Right. And I think too, it can happen to anyone.

Lisa Zurcher: Yes.

Jessica Quindlen: Like there's no, you know, I do think sometimes there's that level in a lot of things in life of, that's other people that'll never happen to me, and then it does. I mean, I know I had my car broken into about a year ago, and my purse is stolen.

LaShae Woodard: But did you have it under a blanket?

Jessica Quindlen: I didn't actually.

Lisa Zurcher: Was it in your glove box?

Jessica Quindlen: No, it's actually even worse. It was fully out. That is 100% on me.

LaShae Woodard: I know someone who did it and I was talking, like Lisa said it came from an officer and I said, yeah, but people stick it under something. He said, under every blanket is a purse. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure that's true.

As a reminder, as an institution, we're here to help our [00:17:00] members and help inform them, help keep them safe. If they get a phone call and they're not comfortable, ask for the extension and their name, hang up and call us back at the number you know belongs to the place you're trying to reach and ask for that extension. Our fraud investigators will welcome that anytime you say, you know what, I'm not comfortable giving it out. You could say, “Lisa, can I get your extension and call you back?” Absolutely.

Jessica Quindlen: I love that. Yeah. And I think that's just across the board, our call center, your department, everyone we will never be offended or frustrated. And in fact, that to me, I feel like would be a red flag if you, if they're getting annoyed that you asked for the extension. That's probably a problem, right? Because we would never say, ah, how dare you check on your money. So, another great tip right there.

Lisa Zurcher: Right. And you know sometimes these frauds will tell people that they're transferring them to the Ent fraud department, or they're transferring them to the [00:18:00] FTC to talk to someone from the Federal Trade Commission.

And so, that's another, red flag to listen for because we don't get calls transferred to us from the FTC or the IRS or any government agency. And to kind of tag onto what LaShae said, if they're more comfortable going to a center, please have them go to a center. The center's always happy to help talk to them, bring them into an office where we can have a private conversation.

Jessica Quindlen: Right. And help them. And they physically know they're there. They're in a secure location. I love that. Well, fantastic. Well, that brings us to the end of our show. Thank you both so much for being here. It was great to have this conversation, even though it's difficult. I'm really excited to kind of get this information out there so thank you.

Lisa Zurcher: Thank you. Yes. We appreciate it. We love what we do. We love talking about fraud and educating people.

Jessica Quindlen: Yes. 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 Quindlen. I will see you next week, same time, same place.