‘Spoofing’ Bank Text Scam

'Spoofing' is a scam where people receive texts or phone calls from people pretending to be from legitimate companies.

The scammers change their number to show that legitimate company’s number rather than their personal number. 

Victims of these scams will either receive a fake text from an entity, in most cases the name of a high-street bank, claiming that a payment of a certain amount, was attempted on their account. In these particular cases the scammers have used CryptoCom as the recipient company. The payment normally is something that the person wouldn’t recognise so scammers would tend to say crypto as people are unfamiliar with this. The rest of the message reads, reply Y is this was you, if not, reply N and you will receive a call shortly. 

If the victim responds this will prompt the scammer to call them. 

In these calls the scammers are able to tell the victim personal information about themselves, such as personal data like their address or date of birth and even bank information like recent payments or even the bank card numbers themselves. The scammer will explain that the account has been compromised and that the victim will have to move the money to other accounts. To do this, the scammer will ask for the victims banking information or things like the security questions to gain access to the account to allow for the money to move into a safe account. 

The scammer will also sometimes say that the account is blocked, and in order to unfreeze the account the victim has to provide their personal details. Or that the only person that can do this is the scammer themselves pretending to be from the bank. The scammer will explain they need access to the account as it is frozen and they need to move the money to a safe account or another account in the victims bank. 

The victim will usually believe the scammer and will inadvertently give access to their account. The victim will not realise until later that they have been scammed with their account being cleared of all its funds. 

As the scammers are so convincing, victims are even by passing their one-time secure key and giving that to the scammers. 

Avoiding scam calls or texts 

If you get a call or text claiming something is wrong with your account do not respond. Instead go to the service provider yourself and check to see if this is legitimate or not. 

• Don’t trust caller ID or the number that displays on your phone.
• Don’t give out any personal information including security codes.
• End the call, wait 5 minutes, contact the service provider rather than the numbers provided. 

Advice from our banks 

Different banks have offered advice on these types of bank scams in the links below. 

Santander - Our top security tips | Santander International 

RBSI - Text message scams | Fraud And Security | NatWest International 

HSBC - Fraud Guide | Security Centre - HSBC Channel Islands & Isle of Man 

Lloyds - How to Protect Yourself From Fraud | Lloyds Bank 

Barclays - Scams | Channel Islands and Isle of Man | Barclays 

Here is an example of the scam text messages, although these ones claim to be from HSBC the scams are also using other high-street bank names and not just HSBC.

Anyone who has received phone calls of this nature should report the incident to Action Fraud www.actionfraud.police.uk/report_fraud or the States of Jersey Police on 612612.