A caller posing as a bank representative called a customer. The customer’s account was going to be hacked, the representative claimed, and they had received word of it from the bank.
Together, they could catch this thief, but the rep would need the customer’s help, and the best way for him to assist in this sting operation was to transfer the entirety of his accounts — both checking and savings — into what the rep referred to as a “suspense account,” which they had created especially for this purpose at a different bank.
The fictitious bank representative then advised the customer to anticipate a call from a caller pretending to be a bank representative. The representative reassured him that this was all a part of the deceit and that the client would question everything the ostensible agent had said up to that point. The customer was advised to tell the caller that he was having work done on his home, which would explain why he needed to transfer such a significant sum of money, according to the accused agent.
A security analyst from the customer’s bank called as soon as the behavioral analytics team identified these transactions as being suspicious.
Fortunately, the analyst taking the call got a gut sense that something was wrong when speaking with the client and was able to inquire about the guy allegedly performing work on the customer’s home, such as his name and where the customer had located him.
When the customer hesitated to provide a name since he didn’t have one, the analyst realized something was amiss and inquired whether someone posing as a representative of the bank had contacted the consumer.
“Fortunately, the client suddenly began to doubt the original contact and think that when the bank called him, it was the genuine bank,” Roger Lester, account director at Featurespace in the United Kingdom, said in an interview.
