Peter Knottenbelt writes:
It can happen to you!
I registered with the FNB phone app and on the same day I received a very convincing call from the ‘Fraud Department’ of FNB informing me that a R99 debit order had been placed on my account and that they needed to verify the authenticity.
I confirmed that it must be one of the scammers that had placed it and that it should be removed.
They then asked me to log into the phone app which I did.
They called me on another phone in the household whist I worked on my phone which had the phone app installed on it.
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They seemed to know everything about me and I had no reason to doubt that they were not the fraud unit.
They kept on indicating that the call is being recorded for my security and I did question as to how I would know that they are from FNB, the response was very convincing.
They helped me go through a process that eventually required me to give them an OTP five-digit number, this is when I hesitated.
They pressured me to just read out the number on the screen, I felt uneasy and asked if I could rather call them back in 10 minutes but they insisted on the urgency so as to prevent any further breaches of security.
On further hesitation the ‘supervisor’ was called, who again confirmed the urgency and that it now appeared that four amounts of R4 000 had been drawn from my account and that I needed to urgently read out the five-digit number so they could cancel the transactions.
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I was now very nervous! The ‘supervisor’ became agitated and assertive, threatening that the account will be closed and I would have to go through the police and the local branch to sort it out or I could just read out the five-digit number and they would cancel all the invalid transactions.
I said I would like to close the account rather than read out the number, the ‘supervisor’ became angry and again told me how foolish I was as I was unlikely to get the R16 000 back as I am refusing the advice of the fraud unit.
I said I would not read out the number but that I would contact the fraud unit and confirm all they were saying.
She gave me an 081 050 3588 number to call back and to ask for Cleopatra at the call centre.
The conversation was then terminated. On calling the real fraud centre at FNB, all the checks showed that it was a scam.
It was a close call and IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU!
