What is bank fraud? how overcome it?

What is bank fraud and how do you overcome it? Our bank accounts contain a lot of information about us, where we also keep most of the savings and where the current economic activity is also carried out. Today, using an application, you can open bank accounts, perform operations, receive loans and transfer money from account to account

What is bank fraud?

The relative ease of opening a bank account by identifying that one is not in front of a bank teller has also brought with it a new type of fraud that is emptying the bank accounts of quite a few people. The method works like this: a person, who in many cases is familiar to us, offers benefits, loans, tempting deals, in order to receive them it is apparently necessary to enter a bank account or open an account. It is usually a fraud of people who are more technologically difficult or less understanding of the small nuances of the bank. At this point the fraudster asks to get access to our bank account or asks for a photocopy of an identity card.

This is usually enough for him to log into our bank account, open a new account in our name, and even if there is a requirement for facial recognition for this purpose, they manage to create the illusion of a photographed person and then begin the actions of taking loans from the account, usually in amounts over NIS 100,000 and transferring them to various parties that are linked to them in one way or another.

Most of the time these fraudsters are not satisfied with one person and are vulnerable to additional family members, spouses, an elderly parent and even children over the age of 18. He acquires their trust and that’s where the trouble begins.

Such cases of a fraudster who managed to bring down family members from several families in the ultra-Orthodox sector of Jerusalem came to the office of lawyer Nicole Caspi, a phenomenon that left an entire community with heavy debts to several banks, credit cards, financing companies and more.

It was a gang, one of which is at the forefront of the fraud that usually identifies itself under a fake name and establishes contact with one of the family members who seems to him to be relatively “easy prey”. In this case it is the employer of a 22-year-old guy who said that his parents were planning to take out a mortgage, the “kind” boss offered to help the family, came to their house and told them that he had ways to get them an interest-free mortgage through banks that he has connections with.

He took their identity cards to check, so to speak, their integrity, opened bank accounts in their names, reported there the disposable mobile number he had purchased and there he received the codes sent from the bank to identify the account openers. In the new account order the credit cards to the business address. Using a similar method, he also contacted credit card companies and took out loans in the amount of NIS 100,000-150,000 from each of the banks, credit card companies, purchased vehicles through financing companies and this within 3-4 days.

What is bank fraud? how overcome bank fraud?

At this point, he says that the sale of a mortgage without interest or a loan with zero interest is about to end and convinces the family members to tell their friends so that they too can get a discount on the mortgage. Shows them fake documents of interest-free mortgage approvals or advertising of interest-free loan deals for payday lenders and sends them to recruit more victims for him.

The phenomenon was discovered when it was time to pay off the loans and the family members received notices and claims from the banks and credit card companies. At this point it was no longer possible to communicate with the fraudster, and by the time the family members came to their senses and realized that it was a fraud and filed complaints with the police, it was already too late.

Salary garnishments and bank account garnishments have already begun to arrive, execution cases were opened for some and the deterioration of the economic situation until they had no possibility of receiving their income to buy food for the children was very rapid. Some of them lived from the beginning on minimum salaries, some on social security allowances, some at this stage were already threatened with taking the house.