UMB Financial Services - scam?

Oswulf

My elderly mother received a 'phone call from somebody who claimed to be from UMB Financial Services asking to speak to my father who died many years ago.  My mother is very hard of hearing and the caller apparently had a very strong accent, so she doesn't really know what was said.  Anyway, a few minutes later she received an email from UMB Financial Services which mentioned a takeover of Santander an attached form requesting details of shareholdings in Alliance & Leicester/Santander.  The address the email came appears to be a genuine one for the company concerned, as was the reply address.

My father did have shares in Santander, but they were sold when his estate was administered.

UMB Financial Services, Inc. seems to be a legitimate US company.

I strongly suspect this is dodgy.  However, what is the scam? And how did the caller know the 'phone number and that my father used to hold Santander shares?

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

Linton

Definite scam. This one is, or was, very common. Anyone planning a take over of Santander is not going to be contacting small shareholders. 

The caller almost certainly had nothing to do with the real UMB Financial Services, Email “from:” addresses are apparently easy to fake.

Companies are required to provide lists of shareholders under some circumstances. Perhaps such a list was leaked when Santander was taking over the failing banks after 2008.

As to what the scam is… The victim would be told that the person wanting to take over Santander was prepared to pay a very high price for the shares.  Then I guess there could be an admin fee to proceed or release the money.

Eyeful

Any time you are contacted out of the blue from someone who wants to help you with your money or investments, its always some form of scam. 

They may claim to be from UMB, but are not.

In all variations of this scam, if the target falls for their patter the end result is the same. The scammer will dream up all manner of fees and taxes which the victim must pay up front, before they can obtain the large amount of money they think they are going to get.

Your mother should be on her guard, as she may get further contacts of this kind.
She should always hang up and ignore them!

daveyjp

The caller didn't know the number, the autodialler system dials thousands of consecutive numbers until one is answered.

They didn't know he held shares.  They hit lucky, which is why they make thousands of calls an hour.

wmb194

daveyjp said:

The caller didn't know the number, the autodialler system dials thousands of consecutive numbers until one is answered.

They didn't know he held shares.  They hit lucky, which is why they make thousands of calls an hour.

No, they can be far, far more targeted than this. In this case my guess would be that the OP's father was a certificated shareholder of Alliance & Leicester shares* and his name and address appeared on the shareholder register and they went from there. As Linton alludes to, things may have changed but shareholder registers are/were publicly available.

*The takeover terms were 1/3rd of a Santander share per A&L share + 18p per A&L share.

Tolg

My elderly mother received the very same call from UMB Financial Services yesterday, 11th July. When told that she didn't have an email account, they emailed her local library with a form. The library contacted her and forwarded a copy to me. As wmb194 suggests, my mother did have Alliance & Leicester shares when it was taken over by Santander and she would have been on the shareholder register.

Agree with Linton and Eyeful that this is a scam. Another sign is the email address. The real UMB company is an American bank with a umb.com address. An email from this business would have an @UMB.com suffix, whereas the suffix on the scam is @umbfinservices.com. This links to a basic website with stock images that uses the same logo as the UMB bank, trying to make it appear that are a bona-fide business connected with the bank. A validation search on scam-detector.com reveals that umbfinservices.com is indeed a scam phishing site with a trust rating of zero out of 100.