She lost 160 thousand. PLN by one fake phone call. Don’t fall for this

The scale of cybercrime, which is growing every year, means that nowadays, just a moment of inattention is enough to lose even your entire life savings on the Internet in a fraction of a second.

Recently, a resident of Bielsk Podlaski found out about this when she received a call from a fraudster pretending to be a bank employee and got involved in his dishonest game. Unfortunately, she lost almost PLN 160,000 this way. The Bielsko police have now informed about the case so that this story can be a warning to others.

How fraudsters impersonating bank employees work

The methods currently used by cybercriminals impersonating bank employees are still not very sophisticated, but this does not mean that they are not effective. Usually, it all starts with a phone call from an alleged consultant who informs us about suspicious and potentially dangerous activity on the account.

It is usually possible to convince the victim that there is a risk that someone wants to take out a loan for him or perform another unauthorized banking operation. In this way, the fraudster gains her trust, taking advantage of her unconditional fear about the fate of her savings. Then, under the pretext of having to perform a series of necessary security activities on the account, the cybercriminal extorts one-time SMS passwords from his victim, used for authorization, and transfers the victim’s money to his own bank account or withdraws it at ATMs.

The victim lost 160,000. zloty

Exactly as we described above, a certain resident of Bielsk Podlaski lost nearly PLN 160,000. PLN stolen from her account by a cybercriminal posing as a bank employee. As a warning, the police from the local police station informed about this unpleasant situation, drawing attention to the fact that real bank employees never ask customers to provide their login, password and authorization codes. It is worth remembering this so that you never fall victim to a similar crime.