If you don’t want to loose all your life savings so easily please pay attention to this. There’s a new advanced 419 scam going round that is so convincing that almost any smart person can fall victim. Many people in the UK has already been tricked into handing over hundreds of thousands of pounds transferred into criminal accounts. This high tech fraud system is known as The authorised push-payment (APP).So far more than 19,000 people lost a total of £100 million to APP scams, according to new figures published by UK Finance.
How does the scam work?
The victims are being tricked into authorising a transfer of money to an account that they believe belongs to a legitimate payee – but in reality controlled by a scammer. Scammers would have hacked into the account of someone who the victim has legitimately payed money into before and the scammers will then disguise as the victim bank calling to warn about a fraud attempt and advising that the only way to protect their money is to transfer to a “safe account for example a family or friend’s bank account, victim then tell their bank to take a payment from their account and transfer it to another account and the bank agrees because it’s a legitimate account.
This has been going for sometime now with a lot of people unaware until recently that the banks are trying to devise a way to reimburse victims of APP scams but the fact is that with transfers made to criminals’ accounts, banks are not currently technically liable for the losses because the transfers are authorised by the victim which in most cases means most victims can’t reclaim their money.
Simple way to avoid being a victim
- A genuine bank or organisation will NEVER contact you asking for your PIN, full password or to move money to a safe account.
- Never give out personal or financial information. Always contact the company directly using a known email or phone number.
- Don’t be tricked into giving a fraudster access to your details. Never automatically click on a link in an unexpected email or text.
- Always question uninvited approaches, in case it’s a scam.
Please share with as many people as possible to reduce the risk.
The contributor, DJ Mind D Gap is a multi award winner UK based Nigerian blogger.
www.minddgapent.com
www.minddgapent.com
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