BANK of Ireland has issued an urgent alert to its customers over a spike in sophisticated scams doing the rounds.
Fraudsters are targeting customers with convincing fake texts and phone calls, tricking them into transferring their money to bogus ‘safe accounts’, in many cases via Revolut.
According to Bank of Ireland, over 80 per cent of Irish people have been targeted in a scam over the last year.
Text messages and phone calls are the most common methods used by these criminals.
Customers should be particularly alert for fraudulent texts that attempt to lure them into calling a fake ‘bank’ phoneline.
This is where the account holder is then duped into transferring funds to their secondary account.
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.
Daily reports are over 10 times the number of those reported weekly in April and May in this week alone.
The bank wishes to urgently remind customers that Bank of Ireland will never ask you to move your money to another account to keep it safe.
The Bank has seen a tenfold increase in reports of this scam in just 24 hours.
Head of Fraud at Bank of Ireland, Nicola Sadlier said: “We have been seeing a concerning pattern in the increase of this type of fraud.
“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.
“Our 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.”
HOW DOES THE SCAM WORK?
OVER the last 24 hours, Bank of Ireland have seen tenfold increase in reports of scams mainly involving the popular banking app, Revolut.
But how do these scams work and what should customers watch out for?
- The texts claim to be from Bank of Ireland and can drop into the thread of a genuine BOI text.
- Callback numbers are usually landline numbers including 01 / 1800 / regional codes
- The callback number will be answered by someone claiming to be from Bank of Ireland, and that there has been suspicious transactions and 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 in their BOI account into their own Revolut account/ or secondary account
- The fraudster doesn’t ask for access to the customer’s account, and do not ask for any security details like PIN’s or codes – avoiding common ‘red flags’ associated with fraud
- The victim is then told they then need to move their money from their Revolut account to a new ‘safe’ account
If any of the points listed above have happened to you there are two main things you can do.
Screen shot the message you suspect to be fraud and send it to 365secuirty@boi.com.
You can also call your trusted numbers, the phone number on the back of your physical card or from the phone contact details in your mobile app.
Meanwhile, a new crackdown is being launched in the war on scam texts in Ireland.
Businesses unregistered with the telecoms regulator will see their mass-texts to customers slapped with “scam likely” warnings from next month in a bid to crack down on phone fraudsters.
More than 7,000 businesses and organisations that send en-masse messages have pre-registered with the The Commission for Communications Regulation, Comreg.
But SMS messages from unregistered companies will be labelled “scam likely”, while scam messages will be blocked completely by October.
