Following this announcement, clients are warned to be on particular alert for fraudulent texts that attempt to lure them into the process of calling a fake ‘bank’ phoneline, a place where the account holder is then duped into transferring funds to their secondary account, in most cases Revolut, and in turn a ‘safe account’, which is controlled by the fraudster.
In addition, 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, and this week have shown an alarming increase, with daily reports this week being over 10 times the number of those reported weekly in April and May.
According to the press release, clients get a text to their phone, requesting that they call a phone number about a suspicious transaction or activity. This claims to be from Bank of Ireland, and can drop into the thread of a genuine BOI text, while callback numbers are usually landline numbers, including 01/1800/regional codes. If clients call it, the callback number will be answered by someone claiming to be from Bank of Ireland, and that there have been suspicious transactions and the customer’s account is compromised.
Following this process, the victim is then asked if they have a Revolut account or any other secondary account. If the answer is positive, they are told that they should move all the money in their BOI account into their own Revolut account/ or secondary account, while the fraudster won’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. After this, the victim is then told they need to move their money from their Revolut account to a new ‘safe’ account.
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