The Voice - Consumer's Voice

I was scammed!

I have been scammed of about P8,700 by people, a lady to be precise claiming to be from my bank. Honestly my guard was down because the bank sent me an email requesting that I do KYC. So the person talked about helping me to complete it, and in the process they cloned my banking app and wiped all the money I had there. They even bought themselves airtime. Like I said my guard was down. This started yesterday when I was sent a link purported to be from the bank which said my account is due for an app update. It said that to confirm my details I must click a link to stay compliant before the 11 May 26. Is there any assistance you can give?

Unfortunately there’s not much that can be done. As I’m sure you know, this scam had no connection with your bank.

I looked at the link you sent me and it connects to a very high-quality copy of your bank’s web site which asks for your online banking username and password. Once you’ve entered those details another screen appears that asks for your full name, home address, cellphone number, email address and ID details. It then asks for your card number and all the security details for your card including the CVV code and your PIN. Finally, it sends you an OTP code and who knows what the scammers behind this will do with that if you share it with them.

This is how scammers seize control of your bank account, simply by asking you for all those details. The only hope is that these scammers have a local partner, the one who you spoke to on the phone who has a Botswana cell number. However, it’s likely that they contacted you using WhatsApp so who knows where in the world they might really be.

The only practical suggestion I can make is that you go immediately to the Police. It’s very unlikely that they can recover your money but they might be able to prevent this happening to someone else.

The lesson from this is never to trust a link that you receive from an unknown source. Never.

They took all her money!

Hello Mr Harriman. Kindly assist my mother with her bank. Yesterday her salary was credited and the bank today took her entire salary saying it is for her credit card. They were supposed to have taken P200 only but took the whole amount. Now they are saying they can only assist on Monday. This is completely not okay.

My mother is now stuck without money and cannot pay anything. She went to two branches today but was told the credit card team will get in touch with her but they never did. She just called their toll free number again and they are saying they have knocked off she can try the bank again on Monday. At the bank they kept saying the credit card team will contact her but they never did.

This is completely unacceptable. It’s also a good example of how large financial institutions like banks often forget that amounts that are small to them aren’t small to us. They forget that the impact on consumers can be devastating. Even if the amount they deducted was justified, there’s no excuse just to take it without calling your mother first to explain what they planned to do and discuss alternative solutions.

I contacted the bank and luckily they seemed to take the issue seriously.

Update. The money was refunded within a few hours.