LISTEN: Inverness businesswoman warns of banking scam
Woman wary of caller telling of "compromised accounts"
An Inverness woman hopes to alert others in the Highlands of a scam which - almost - caught her offguard and filtered money from both her personal and business accounts. The local businesswoman who is with the Bank of Scotland for both her work and personal accounts, received an early morning phonecall about some irregular activity online.
"I had a call out-of-the-blue, a woman who said she was from Visa Verification, to say she'd noticed a couple of unusual things about my account.
"I listened to what she was saying and then she asked if my card had been used online this morning, I said, "No it hasn't been" then she told me that there'd been several spends like Marks & Spencer £300, John Lewis £500.
"I said that's certainly not the case, but she said there'd been a password block after one time when they'd attempted to use the account and got the number wrong twice.
"She said, not to worry, I'll stop those other payments but it looks as though your account's been compromised.
"I went into a panic, but then asked "Which account?" and she told me it's the one I use online.
"I then thought, if she was from the bank she should've said what the account was actually called.
"I then told her which one I thought it was as she was calling from Visa. I thought, I'll only give her the last four digits, but then she warned me never to give out card details on the phone.
"She then asked what other accounts I had with the bank, and I said "I have many" as they're for different things, all from the same bank.
"She said the bank had already tried to get in touch and she asked to verify my phone number.
"I'd no sooner given my (mobile) number than it rang. I asked her to excuse me and I answered that phone, she said she was Angela from Bank of Scotland and that Stephanie from the fraud investigation team would talk me through the procedure.
"I came off one call onto the other and Stephanie said that we'd have to close all must accounts and put the money into a holding account.
The number which the bank had called on was the same one which was on the back of Joan's card and Stephanie had claimed that this was verification that she really had been called by the bank. The Inverness businesswoman takes up the story from when Stephanie made her move for the money transfer:-