Protect your bank and credit card information from theft and scams
06/11/07. The Kentucky Post (online). By Alice Haymond. Post staff reporter
Scam artists are targeting small banks and their customers, including Boone County's Heritage Bank, by sending seemingly legitimate e-mails requesting account information. The e-mails are phishing attacks, a rising problem on the Internet, said Major Jack Prindle of the Boone County Sheriff Department.
The people behind it create a copy a banking institution's Web site and send out e-mails alerting the recipients to a problem with their accounts and a link to the fraudulent site, said Prindle, commander of the sheriff's Electronic Crime Division. "People will log in and provide account information, which can be used in a variety of fraud schemes," Prindle said.
After securing a pin number, for example, the scammer can then create a duplicate card and use it in ATMs to access money in the account. Heritage Bank Vice President Lee McNeely said people who've received such e-mails have called him from across the nation. Most are not customers of the bank, he said.He doesn't know of any customers who have been scammed and encourages anyone who receives such an e-mail to delete it. "There's not much we can do at this end other than alert our customers to the problem," McNeely said. "Initially we try to get copies of the e-mails and turn them over to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and they try to get the sites shut down."
New sites however, inevitably pop up soon afterward, he said.
Although that type of Internet crime is international, local banks like Heritage are ideal targets because they don't have the Web site security that larger banks do, Prindle said. There are national organizations that deal with such scams, the Internet Crime Complaint Center and the United States Emergency Readiness Team, through which e-mails recipients can find information on phishing and send complaints. "We gather as much evidence as we can, work with authorities and share information so these perpetrators can be prosecuted and we can put an end to these types of crimes," Prindle said. "If we don't, it will get even more out of hand than it already is."
Anyone with information or concerns about the scams should call the sheriff's office at (859) 371-1234.
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