How to spot a fraudster

In last week's blog, I talked about the different types of prepaid fraud. This week I will discuss how to identify the fraudsters behind these scams.

With our experience in this area, we have helped build the foundation to help protect our retailers and in turn their customers. We are regularly working with partners in Europe, who often see the latest fraud trend first, and communicate this information with our merchants. Reminders are given during inbound calls into our support desk, and we have applied limits and reporting that monitors spikes prompting our support team to validate if the transactions were legitimate. We have also implemented warning messages on our terminals in several areas including at the transaction level and on the vouchers. Preventative measure need to be taken at all levels, that is why we merchants need to stay informed on the latest scams.

Don’t be the next victim. Here are 6 things you need to watch out for:

1. If you are speaking to an actual rep from your supplier, please understand that in most cases they should have full access to your information. At Now Prepay, our support team can view all transactions in real time and can validate back to you the transaction number without having to ask you for any information. Our team will never ask for or confirm any other information on the voucher outside of the transaction number.
2. They are often aggressive and can become outright rude, demanding that the funds be paid or products printed, even go as far as threatening a large fine if you don’t comply with their request. They will call during busy times of the day, usually in the afternoons, or will call late in the evening when managers are rarely in.
3. They may know a lot about your business and can be so convincing that they are your supplier or that you have their product. They can find almost anything about your business on the internet now with so much being public, including the store owners name, manager’s name, full address and phone numbers, email address, tax numbers, etc.
4. They do their research on the products or software that they are calling in. In our case, they often target the same products which are financial vouchers or products like iTunes with a PIN and have been able to get enough of an understanding on how our terminal works to make their pitch even more convincing.
5. They will often try to start off by printing lower denominations and if successful, will request a larger amount. In some cases, they will try to call back the next day.

6. They may be empathetic and speak to the fraud that has been happening indicating that yes, the retailer or consumer should be careful.

As long as these fraudsters are successful in finding victims, they will continue to focus on prepaid products. We want to ensure that our message is constantly getting out to our network of retailers, consumers, friends, family, etc.

If we could stress three points in hopes that this will be shared, we would want to consumers to:

1. Regularly watch your bank account for odd or higher than normal EFT amounts pulled from your account. For retailers selling prepaid, have an understanding of the stores prepaid purchasing habits and watch the invoice amounts being deducted from your account. This is one of the main reasons we have moved to twice weekly invoicing as our customers have been able to successfully recognize a jump mid-week and have been able to stop fraud attempts.
2. Educate those around you to watch out for fraud attempts, stressing to never give information like their bank accounts, credit card numbers, and prepaid product information over the phone, especially if you did not initiate the reason for providing this info. Watch out for your community, so for retailers selling prepaid products, be mindful for customers wanting to purchase large amounts of prepaid products and when in doubt, call your supplier for advice or assistance. We will often get on the phone to these customers directly that are in our retailer’s locations to probe into the reason for the purchase. With our retailers help, we have been able to stop hundreds of customers from being defrauded.
3. When in doubt, hang up and look up the phone number for your supplier, utility provider, government program, etc, and call them directly to see if this is a legitimate call. Do not ask for the phone number to call back on these calls as they often do have a fake number set up that is made to sound like you have indeed called the right place. Refer to the invoices you have received directly or look up the information online.

Fraud prevention is everyone’s responsibility, so take the time to read the messages your suppliers are sending to you whether it be on your statement, an email message, or messaging applied to the tools you are using. Share this information with as many people as possible. If you have been a victim of fraud, report it! The more consumers reporting this to their local police fraud departments, the more focus will be put on this, regardless how small or large the amount is. We need to get in the mindset that we, as a community, need to help stop this from happening, and sharing your experience will hopefully stop someone else falling victim.

If you or someone that you know has been a victim of fraud and you want more information on how to report it, please click here.