A person from Paraná who was trying to upload his data was embezzled by scammers who accessed his personal information and emptied his bank account.
The case was denounced and it is being investigated how the criminal scheme came to fruition, but a first suspicion points to the bank's social networks and the ease with which outsiders can "clone" a line or access another's chip with just some data; while other similar scams take place based on the traffic of personal databases of thousands of people in the country.
The man who suffered the theft of his data and the money from his bank account, recounted how it happened: “On Sunday I was trying to load the data on the Tu Hogar page of Banco Hipotecario to see if I qualified for Procrear and continued ticked, as I had already called 0800 and sent emails and they had not answered me and the deadlines expired, I tried sending a direct message to the official Instagram of the mortgage bank, I noticed that it had the blue tick. I asked them to see if they could expedite the procedures or if they could contact me to explain the problem I was having. They instantly answer me that they are going to call me, and within seconds they call me on WhatsApp. It all happened seconds after I sent the direct message to the official IG, I want to highlight this because of what happens next. They call me immediately on Sunday at noon, which already seemed very strange to me, I question the day and time and the chanta begins to 'chamuy' me, I let him speak and while I look from what account they had answered me, and if Well, the logo was the same, it didn't have the blue checkmark or followers, it was retro!
As always in this type of scam, the scammer asked for his personal information, but the man refused, insulted him and cut off the communication. “It gave me a hard time,” he says, but he closed the matter, although the failure of the financial institution was clear: “I sent a direct message to the official account and within seconds a trout account answered me. Clearly the official account is hacked or there are accomplices here who sell data, in any case, as a customer I felt insecure," said the victim.
Two days later the unexpected happened: “Tuesday morning, a business day, I realized that I had no signal on the phone, but since every time they call me I can't talk because the service is bad, I'm accustomed, and, like most people, I use WhatsApp. But this time the phone was dead, no signal, no internet. When I enter a place where I had WiFi, 45 minutes later an email from the Mortgage Bank arrives informing me that a transfer had been made. I went pale, I tried to enter homebanking and nothing, I couldn't. I called the bank and they put me on eternal hold as always. Desperate, I went to the Paraná branch and explained that they were robbing me. An employee reacted immediately and helped me change the homebanking passwords again. He explained to me that they stole my number to be able to change the passwords of all the applications since they are validated with a text message from your number. We were also late, they had already emptied my account and they had tried to enter my Mercado Pago and Mercado Libre account to use the cards.
Fortunately my partner unsubscribed them.”
Then he went to the company that provided the cell phone service to warn and complain about what had happened: “While this nightmare was going on, I went to the Paraná Personal branch and asked the manager to explain to me how a stranger had taken over of my number so easily and with the consent and complicity of this company. The manager verified that what I was saying was true and that the supposed person who stole my number also had six more active lines. He contacted the fraud area and canceled the scammer's chip and they returned my number with a new chip. They didn't give me any explanation. They told me to file a complaint," said the man, who that same day reported the incident to the Economic Crimes Division of the Entre Ríos Police, where they told him that "there were other victims."
“With just one number, these thieves can get into all your accounts. The phone company was responsible for everything that happened to me and others. I felt unprotected and violated, I was on the air and absolutely no one gave me an explanation. Neither does the bank. In the case of the company's oligopoly, it is inadmissible with the millions they earn, the manifest indolence and the hole they have in security and that harms our customers, and in the case of the bank, the same thing", lamented the victim and claimed : "I hope someone puts on their pants, be it a prosecutor, judge, or some regulatory body and make them pay us for the damage they did to us and the insecurity they make us live, and I say they do it because every time I get an email from the bank , or I run out of signal, I revive everything again, it also happens to me every time the bill arrives with the indiscriminate increases they make. In all the institutions they told me the same thing, the same thing can happen to all of us”.
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“Increasingly sophisticated”
The Systems engineer and head of the Cybercrime Division of the provincial Police, Gabriel Ferro, spoke about this type of scam. “What we have had, but few, are cases where a new chip arrives at the company and when it is activated, the person is left without a signal, without service. There is no good system, if you lose the chip you ask for a new one, therein lies the fault, and a person who is not the owner manages to acquire the chip with that line. Sometimes it is complemented with this type of facts”, he explained.
In addition, he referred to the new virtual scams that are appearing: “We continue to have tons of scams for fake purchases, they are more and more sophisticated, there are sellers who promote bicycle sales, they already have an infrastructure. Although there are still those who publish on buying and selling pages, more complex techniques are appearing. People start to investigate and believe that it is a serious company. They are paid sites, from abroad, which is quite complex to request information and there are tools that have templates for e-commerce with sections to sell, to make payments”.
For his part, the head of the Economic Crimes Division of the Police, Javier González, said that they have received several complaints of people being scammed after entering the Procrear page. “We have had victims who have entered the official page and when they make a claim or request something, it is impossible. There are people who make links on that official page and capture the victim and ask for WhatsApp. There they begin to revalidate some data ”.
In turn, he reported that the theft of contact data continues, to whom scammers send messages posing as other people with another number, ask for money or say they sell dollars at low cost. As they think it is someone trustworthy, the victims transfer the money to them.
“They began to hack Google accounts, which are associated with other accounts and applications, so sometimes they also do this type of hacking, they work with different IP packages from different cities, they are hackers who are dedicated to this, automatically they take possession of the contacts of the networks”, explained González.
Source: Diario Uno - José Amado