Okanagan woman says questions, red flags helped avoid phone scam

An Okanagan woman says she asked questions, and plenty of them, in dodging a phone scam.

The Vernon resident, who requested anonymity, said she had heard of plenty of phone scams before, but never one involving her bank.

Now, she’s hoping her story will help others avoid this bank scam as well.

The woman said she received a call from a person claiming to be from her financial institution, and that she was being contacted because strange charges were showing up on her credit card.

“(The scammer) knew my full name,” said the Vernon woman. “She said there had been a suspicious charge overnight on my credit card, and she wanted to know if it was me.

“First, she said it was for $300. Later in the conversation, she said there was another one for $1,200.”

The Vernon woman added, “(the scammer) probably didn’t have her script in front of her, so she was making stuff up as we went along.”

The woman says the scammer then asked her to read back her credit card number, to verify her account, noting the scammer read the first four digits of her credit card.

Two of those numbers, though, were wrong, which led to “red flags being raised.”

“Then she wanted me to repeat the number to her, to make sure it was my account,” said the Vernon woman. “I told her that I wasn’t going to do that because she should have had that in front of you.”

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The woman said more red flags were raised when she tried using her bank’s online app, to see the strange charges. After telling the scammer that she was about to do that, “she said, ‘No, don’t do that, because you’ll give hackers more access to your account.’”

The Vernon woman then said the scammer told her to download an app that would allow long-distance screen sharing, “so they could show me the charges.”

The Vernon woman said, “I told her, ‘That’s not happening. I’m not convinced that you’re from my bank.”

Not long after that, the Vernon woman said the phone went dead.

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“As soon as that happened, I called the number on the back of my credit card, and they said, ‘Yeah, that was absolutely a scam, and that there were no strange charges,’” said the Vernon woman, adding she double-checked through the online app.

Asked if she was concerned that the scammer knew her full name, the Vernon woman said “yes, but then I thought all they had to do was look in the phone book.

“My full name and phone number are listed in the phone book. Anybody could get that.”

As to why she reached out to Global News, the Vernon woman said it was to warn others, stating “(the scammer) sounded very convincing. She had it down, and even when she told me to get the app, she was very authoritative.”