There are still a few touches left to complete the renovations on Hannah Symons basement.
She likes the results but part of her wishes she’d not gone through with the remodelling, because of what happened last September.
“The contractors, I think they were updating their IT systems and they were hacked,” she told Global News.
She says the hackers impersonated the contractor and exchanged several emails with her, eventually giving her bogus banking information.
“That resulted in us paying our penultimate payment of $45,000 into a criminal bank account,” Symons explained.
She said a few days later she found out it was a scam, then called the bank’s fraud department, but was told that they could not help her.
“I would need to go into the branch where my husband made the wire transfer,” she recalled.
According to her, she went on a Saturday, was told someone would call on Monday but nobody did.
So she returned to the branch on Tuesday.
“They had no record of the conversation that happened on the weekend, nothing had been done,” the high school teacher claimed.
She alleges that it wasn’t until Wednesday that the bank alerted their own fraud department.
“So it was five days after I’d initially called RBC that they took any action whatsoever,” she pointed out.
She said now her branch manager explained that since the other bank wasn’t responding there’s nothing they can do.
Terry Cutler, cybersecurity expert with Cyology Labs, says online scams like this are increasing and that even small companies need to do a better job to protect their systems.
One problem he points to is lack of education.
“Consumers are not very savvy when it comes to cybersecurity,” he noted. “They’re not aware of the latest scams and frauds to watch out for.”
He’s launched a free mobile app called Fraudster with free lessons on how to spot online fraud and track updates about the latest scams.
Symons is in arbitration with her contractor over that payment but she thinks if her bank had responded faster the fraud could’ve been stopped.
“I think banks need to be better at responding to fraud and to dealing with incidents like this,” she stressed.
In a statement, RBC said if clients are impacted by potential fraud, they should contact the bank.
They wrote, “We also provide information of how to prevent scams on our website – How Cyber Criminals Make Contact.
“While we cannot speak to the specifics of this situation due to client privacy, we can advise that we are reviewing this matter and will continue to reach out to our client directly to discuss the situation,” they concluded.