Scams in your bank feeds

How’s this for devious?

A client alerted us to a suspicious transaction on their PayPal account.

The transaction was a request for money which was then canceled, however the details on the transaction were “Don’t recognise the seller? Quickly let us know” and then a phone number to call… which is NOT the phone number for PayPal.

The screenshot below was taken from inside the Paypal portal where information should be able to be trusted. Out of interest I called the number to see where the scam would take me.

After being greeted by a b-grade robot voice thanking me for calling PayPal (which I obviously hadn’t) , I then got to listen to a few minutes of rather tortured phone connecting sounds before finally reaching “Tim” from “PayPal” (Lies!), who then asked for my email address and mobile number.

He then attempted to send me a code which I was to read back to him and we had some fun going backwards and forwards confirming the spelling of email addresses and phone numbers for a frustratingly long time.

Presumably that code would have allowed “Tim” to take over my PayPal account, however unfortunately for “Tim” the code never arrived as I frankly was lying about every bit of information I gave him.

It is a very clever scam, and I can see this approach getting used across all kinds of platforms in the future.

And while this scam will surely catch out many people, I hope the shoddy execution of the phone call section will be enough to alert most people that they are dealing with a scammer.

I don’t know which was worse: the line quality of the call or Tim’s English skills, but hopefully the botched landing of an otherwise clever set up will save some people from being scammed.

Oh and if anyone actually has the email address ura.muppet-tim@hotmail.com, please ignore any emails from PayPal and accept my apologies for the spam.