Bank warns clients anew of fraud, scams amid Covid-19 crisis

THE banking public is warned anew against scammers who offer a huge amount of money to people who will lend their bank accounts.

Fraudsters are recruiting “money mules” that will allow them to launder ill-gotten money, BDO Unibank said in a statement.

“Do not let other people use your bank account, debit card or credit card to make transactions on their behalf. Never provide your personal and account details to anyone,” the lender told bank clients.

Under Republic Act 9160 or the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2001, money mules can be prosecuted with up to a seven-year jail term and penalty of up to P3 million.

According to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, money mules are persons recruited to lend their personal bank or e-money accounts to receive cash deposits or online transfers from illegal sources posing as legitimate transactions such as remittances, charity or Covid-19 donations, among others.

The public is advised to ignore suspicious calls, emails, private messages and website links offering easy cash in exchange for the use of their own bank account.

BDO said the most effective way of preventing scams targeting bank customers is never to share bank information to other people no matter how convincing they appear to be real.

“To all bank customers, your login details and One-Time PIN (OTP) are yours and yours alone. Nobody should own them but you. Once you logged in your username and password, you will receive an OTP from your bank as its final security measure. Do not share this OTP to anyone else, especially to the scammers through their fake websites, or those posing as bank employees,” the bank told the public.

Emails which ask customers to click on links are scam attacks, even if they include the spelled-out bank website as a hyperlink.

“Here’s a useful tip, to check the veracity of the email, let your cursor linger on the weblink without clicking on it. A preview will reveal that it leads to a different site and not to the official website of your bank,” BDO noted.

In a BSP advisory, banks and the public are reminded to remain vigilant and to take necessary precautionary measures against these new patterns of criminal behavior as well as emerging typologies on money laundering or terrorism financing activities and other financial crimes being perpetrated amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to the National Bureau of Investigation, the number of online fraud incidents has doubled since the beginning of the lockdown. It’s possible the incidents will only continue to perpetuate because people are confined to their homes. Due to the increase in online activity, individuals become more prone to accessing malicious emails, applications and websites. (CSL)

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