Call to LloydsBankofScotland Fraud Dept was hacked and scam attempted - a regular event?

IanSkye

Bank of Scotland Fraud Dept asked me to call regarding an unusual payment December 2022 (it wasn’t). The person who answered the call asked lots of detailed questions and asked me to hold for several long periods. This made nervous and I terminated the call.
Visited my local branch next day and they listened to their recording of the call and advised that an attempt was made by the scammer to take money from my account. Bank froze the account.

The bank advised that I make a formal complaint to get an answer to what happened. I am still waiting for a response. 

Called Complaints Dept today and they advised that calls to Fraud being intercepted by scammers is a regular occurrence. Is this known and communicated to bank account customers?

Care - calls to a banks Fraud Dept can be answered by a scammer. Anyone else experience the same?

SiliconChip

Intercepting calls would require technology that is probably beyond all but the most sophisticated scammer. What is much more likely to have happened is that the scammers sent you a text purporting to be from BOS asking you to call a number, that number will be the scammers pretending to be the BOS fraud department. The advice is to never call a number from a text, instead call the number on the back of your debit or credit card.

flaneurs_lobster

Well that post begs a few questions. I'll start. 

How was the initial contact with "Bank of Scotland Fraud Dept" made to you? Did they supply a phone number for you to phone them back? 

grumbler

Well, IF they really "listened to their recording of the call " then it was a call to the genuine number.

Zanderman

grumbler said:

Well, IF they really "listened to their recording of the call " then it was a call to the genuine number.

Indeed, the basic scenario described suggest the OP was scammed by a message purporting to be from the bank and rang the number that was in the scam message.   In which case there's no way the branch could listen to a recording of it.

So if they did it must have been genuine - the scenario in that case is quite worrying.

But... what actually happened in branch, did they really listen to a recording of their call? Or is the OP generalising about what they reported the call was about?  And can a branch access recordings of calls from the fraud department?  

It's an odd scenario and it doesn't quite add up in my view, and I'm wondering if there's some misunderstanding going on here..  The idea that calls to fraud are regularly intercepted - and that this is acknowledged by the bank - doesn't ring true at all. Calls to fraudsters pretending to be the bank seems more likely.

IanSkye

Hi, thank you for your comments, appreciated

it was a genuine BofS Fraud Dept number that I called and this was confirmed by bank branch. It’s the same as the one listed on website and given in text. The branch also had a recording of the call.

the scam was foiled by BofS because the person tried to use an incorrect staff number to make the transaction whilst we were on the phone.

I don’t know what to do with my experience and what I’m being told by the bank which led me to this forum. 

AmityNeon

IanSkye said:

the scam was foiled by BofS because the person tried to use an incorrect staff number to make the transaction whilst we were on the phone.

Were you informed exactly how the scammer attempted to steal money from your account? If you were to transfer money out of your account yourself, via any method, you would not need (nor have access to) any staff number.

Using a staff number to make a transaction implies the use of a system to which only staff should have access.

It may also help others here if you described the questions you were asked that made you suspicious.

IanSkye

Hi, the branch manager informed me that the transaction was attempted by the person on the call. I assumed they were processing the original one that failed. However, the branch manager advised that an incorrect staff number raised a red flag and account frozen. 

It made me question that this was an internal issue and branch manager agreed it was a valid question.
The silence from the bank since makes me wonder.
I can go to the Ombudsman if they don’t respond in next week or two.

IanSkye

When the call to Fraud was answered the female had a very strong Asian accent which I struggled to understand. 

Questions asked were the usual name, sort code, account number, address, detail of transaction that Fraud queried.
Then date of birth, last four digits on card, expiry date, recent debit transactions, when and where bank account opened, previous address, first four digits on card. These were asked then I was put on hold for a minute or so. 

This is when we terminated the call

gwapenut

How were you asked to phone them? Did they phone you, and then you called back within a few minutes? Sometimes they keep your landline connection open.

Perhaps once you called back the scammer, the scammer called the bank simultaneously to attempt the fraud. Was it YOUR voice on the bank's recording?

sheramber

When my bank ( not B of S )  fraud department phoned me and I had to phone them back, they never asked all that info.

 I would have been suspicious at that point as that is a lot of personal information that could be used by a scammer.