7 News Belize

Major Commercial Bank Warns About Phishing Scams
posted (July 18, 2018)

Tonight one of the commercial banks is speaking out against email "phishing" scams and warning its customers not to be fooled and defrauded.  Heritage Bank says that at least two of its customers have already had their accounts cleaned out after they clicked on links in bogus emails.  And once the money's gone, there's no way of getting it back!  Heritage says in the cases they know about, the money was cleaned out of a private account, and then wired all the way to Nigeria.

Now, you may not know what e-mail phishing scams are, but for regular email users - they are all too common, popping up in your inbox almost daily - and one of the fraudsters' favourite con games is pretending to be mailing you from a known bank.  

Heritage Managing Director Steve Duncan explained today what you have to be on the lookout for:…

Hon. Steve Duncan - Managing Director, Heritage Bank
"Customers have been receiving emails and the emails have been asking them to either click on a link or to open an attachment or to provide some personal information. Either of those things end up allowing the fraudster to be able to get confidential information that gives them access to the customer's account. It looks very genuine but when you click on it is when the problem occurs because it takes you to some fictitious other site running in the background that you are not aware of and that is the danger."

"I'm now seeing another approach where they are soliciting people, not customers; people to say well listen I want to work for you, would you like to make some money and people say and they say okay. We are going to transfer monies to your account and then you in turn send it out by western union or money gram to us. From what we are seeing so far it looks like its going to Nigeria right and people are actually doing it and sending money to Nigeria, keeping some for themselves, sending the balance to Nigeria by western union or by money gram."

"So again we want to say that in the banking community, people don't come and ask for those kind of personal information like passwords and so it's important that you don't share these things with anybody."

Jules Vasquez
"What would a mail from heritage bank ask me and not ask me?"

Hon. Steve Duncan
"Banks and especially heritage bank will give you general direction, information on products etc. They will never ask you personal information to be sent across electronic channels where we know hackers are out there."

Jules Vasquez
"Have your clients, have your customers experienced any personal losses because of this?"

Hon. Steve Duncan
"A couple that I have seen and we were actually able to stop somewhere, we stopped somewhere around 3 already that we were able to abort. At least 2 had already lost because the fraudster get your actual correct password because you give it to them unwittingly or wittingly one of the two. So they have the real deal there. We are recommending that there are two things; before you do it, it would be good to check. Even if you omit to check and you realize afterwards, call your bank immediately because if we can trace the transaction and block the account. There was one where we were able to stop the person from taking the money out and we've put the police on it, meaning we caught it in time when they moved it to another account before they were able to get it out of the second account to send it by western union. The person came into the bank to get the money to go to western union."

Jules Vasquez
"A local fraudster?"

Hon. Steve Duncan
"The locals are being used as the pawns."

Jules Vasquez
"By some international..."

Hon. Steve Duncan
"That is correct, the locals are being used as the pawns, so they get them to.... you see you are not able because of exchange control laws and so in Belize you can't send money out to another country direct."

Jules Vasquez
"You need an authorization from central bank."

Hon. Steve Duncan
"Thank you, so because of that they have to use a middle man in Belize."

So, if you see one of these mails, the first rule is: do not click on any link.  Second, if you're not sure whether it comes legitimately form your bank - you should call them  for clarification before doing anything.

We note that we have seen phishing scams designed to mimic all the major commercial banks in Belize. And there are also very many designed to look like emails from BTL.  In all cases, just do not click any link that appears in the mail.

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