For several years now, perpetrators of malicious acts have been overflowing with ingenuity to come up with new schemes, aimed at extracting a few precious euros from their victims. Recently, it is the “ mule fraud », a relatively unknown technique in France which has started to claim victims. Concretely, the criminal will send money to a target. He will then contact the latter (often by SMS) and explain to him that he made a mistake during his transfer, asking him to retransfer the amount to him.
Watch out for your bank card on Sunday and Monday
Obviously, bank card scams are still very widespread, with a method that could not be more effective for stealing victims’ identifiers and extracting money from them. According to the European Central Bank, France is the European champion of bank card fraud, with more than 211 million euros misappropriated.
The technique is known, the criminals insert an object into the slot of the distributor in order to block it, while remaining close to the latter. The victim will then have to hand over their bank card and enter their code, which will (more or less) discreetly be memorized by the criminal. The card being blocked, the victim has no other choice but to leave the premises, while the perpetrator of the scam will take care of recovering the card, for which he now knows the secret code.
And of course, to complete the trap, these scams generally tend to take place on Sundays and Mondays. For what ? Quite simply because the banking establishments are closed these two days, which leaves plenty of time for the scammer to use the credit card, the victim often being unable to object and/or notice the fraud.
A few weeks ago, another fraud was wreaking havoc, always linked to our precious banking establishments. The latter consists of allowing the user to call their bank for a simple account verification. The number displayed is the correct one, the interface seems normal. However, on the other end of the phone, it is not a bank advisor who answers… but a cybercriminal who claims to be a bank employee, ready to recover your confidential information. So be wary.
