When banks detect suspicious activity in a customer’s account, they often call account holders to discuss the transactions. Time is of the essence when it comes to preventing fraud, especially in the case of wire and automated clearing house transactions. In most cases, if a caller claims to work for the fraud department of your or your business’s bank, the call is likely legitimate. However, in a currently active scam, criminals pretend to be bank fraud investigators and try to extract account information from consumers or employees. Here’s how to identify criminals and prevent account breaches: Don’t trust caller ID. A fraudster might “spoof” or fake a phone number, which means your caller ID could display a bank’s fraud department name and number. Even if caller...
