Bank of Ireland has recorded a 10-fold increase in attempted “safe account” scams this week.
Criminals have been contacting potential victims and luring them into calling a fake bank phoneline where they can be duped into transferring funds to a secondary account – in most cases Revolut – and in turn to a safe account, controlled by the fraudster.
Reports of the scam to Bank of Ireland’s fraud line and Text Checker service have been on the increase since the start of the year. This week has seen daily reports over 10 times the number of those made weekly in April and May.
[ ComReg plans overhaul of SMS text message system to help block scammersOpens in new window ]
The bank has urged customers to be hyper-vigilant of text messages claiming to be from the bank.
“We have been seeing a concerning pattern in the increase of this type of fraud,” said Bank of Ireland’s head of fraud Nicola Sadlier. “This week’s escalation has resulted in the highest number of reports in a single day of this particular type of fraud, so we need our customers and the general public to be vigilant and recognise the warning signs.”
She said the main advice is to “look out for these texts and do not call back. And remember that Bank of Ireland will never ask you to move your money to another account to keep it safe.”
Typically the scam starts with the customer getting a text message asking them to call a phone number about a suspicious transaction or activity.
Such messages can drop into the thread of a genuine BOI text. Questions posed can be a variant of “Did you login from a new device?”; “Do you recognise this transaction?”; or “A transaction for [value] to [merchant] was declined and your card has been placed on hold” – followed by “if this was not you / if you don’t recognise this / etc please call us back on a given number.
The callback number will be answered by someone claiming to be from Bank of Ireland, highlighting suspicious transactions and claiming the customer’s account is compromised.
The victim is then asked if they have a Revolut / or other secondary account. If they say yes, they are told that they should move all the money from their BOI account into their own Revolut account, or secondary account.
The fraudster does not ask for access to the customer’s account, and does not ask for any security details like pin numbers or codes – avoiding common red flags associated with fraud.
The victim is then told they need to move their money from their Revolut account to a new “safe” account, after which it disappears for good.
