At Dort Financial Credit Union, we want to make sure that your identity and your money are protected! The following guide is meant to help educate you on scammers’ tricks and methods so you can stay a step ahead.
For more tips and guidelines, use the Financial Trade Commission website, www.onguardonline.gov. Consumers can take interactive quizzes designed to enlighten them about identity theft, phishing, smishing, spam, and online-shopping scams. Elsewhere on the site, consumers can find detailed guidance on how to monitor their credit histories, use effective passwords and recover from identity theft.
If you have additional questions on how to keep your account safe, or suspect you may have been the victim of fraud or identity theft, contact Dort Financial at 810.767.8390 or 800.521.3796 or come in to any of our offices, and we will assist you.
Dort Financial Credit Union employees will never contact you to purchase Bitcoin or make a deposit at a Bitcoin ATM. Furthermore, an employee or representative of the credit union will never ask you to purchase gift cards. Scammers use these payment methods because the transaction is difficult to trace and to recover the funds. Please never share your personal information such as a social security number, account information, and usernames or passwords to online banking or mobile banking. If you receive a call, text, or email from an individual claiming to be an employee or representative of the credit union please hang up or don’t respond and contact us at 800-521-3796.
Still not sure if you’re involved in a Bitcoin, gift card, or cryptocurrency scam? If you answer “yes” to any of these questions it may be a scam!
Below are some of the common scams and frauds that you should be familiar with in order to keep your information safe..
Phishing/Vishing
Text Messaging Scams
ATM Tampering
Debit/Credit Card Scams
Counterfeit Checks
Telephone scams
Mail Fraud
Criminals use fraudulent emails (known as phishing emails) that appear legitimate and are designed to deceive you into sharing personal or account information. The phishing emails often include logos of legitimate companies, content from their websites, and sometimes the names of real employees.
Many scammers randomly generate email addresses—that’s why you may have received fraudulent emails that appear to be from banks you do not have an account with. They may also obtain email addresses online from web pages, chat rooms, online auctions, directories, or other sources.
Dort Financial will never send unsolicited emails asking members to provide, update, or verify personal or account information, such as passwords, Social Security numbers, PINs, credit or debit card numbers, or other confidential information.
This scam involves the victim receiving a “robo” (computer automated) phone call from our 800-521-3796 toll-free number. The robo message states it is calling to verify a transaction with coinbase.com, typically a couple thousand dollars’ worth. It then states if they did not complete the transaction to press 1. If the victim follows the prompt, they will be asked to provide personal and financial information. Please understand that members will never receive an automated call from the credit union’s toll-free telephone number.
Identity thieves are now sending out mass text messages to mobile phone users in certain areas, attempting to get the user to share account information by way of a phone call or return text message. Several credit unions have been affected or named in these scams. It seems the thieves not only target the members of a credit union, but non-members as well, relying on confusion and scare tactics to steal personal information.
This crime involves tampering with an ATM in order to capture your ATM card and PIN.
Typically, thieves attach devices like skimmers and false fronts to obtain the information stored on the magnetic strip or to trap a card. To obtain your PIN, thieves hide miniature cameras near the keypad, install a fake keypad over the real one, or simply stand close to the ATM (“shoulder surfing”) where they can view your PIN entry.
Debit & credit card fraud involves the unauthorized use of another person’s card information to make purchases from their accounts or access funds. Never give the 3-digit code to an unsolicited caller or in an email request. Dort Financial already has your account information and will never call you to verify it.
Please contact us if your Debit or Credit card is lost or stolen, or you suspect there have been unauthorized charges.
Credit Card: Call us at 800.521-3796 during normal business hours or 833.333.0416 after hours.
Debit Card: Call us at 800.521.3796
One of the latest scams that fraudsters are trying to get away with involves asking for payment with a gift card. In this scenario the fraudster may mask their phone number, email address, or website to make it appear that they are a real and recognizable business. Because business phone numbers are public, a fraudster can easily imitate a phone number using software, to make it appear that the real business is calling you. The fraudster may reach out offering a service, product, or threatening you with legal action if you do not pay them immediately in a specific format, typically a gift card or wire transfer. The key to identifying that this scenario is a scam is the fact that they asked for payment in gift cards. A legitimate business will never call, email, or ask you to make a payment using gift cards. If you find yourself questioning whether a call or email is a scam, your best bet is to contact the business directly from a phone number or website you know is valid, especially if you were not expecting a call from that business.
In general, you should try to do the following in order to prevent fraud:
Counterfeit cashier’s checks supposedly issued by Dort Financial Credit Union are in circulation across the United States. There are several variations of the bogus checks, but the most common has the Dort Financial Credit Union name and logo.
Many, but not all, are being mailed by scammers to people selling items over the internet. The cashier’s check is usually made out for several thousand dollars more than the purchase price. The “buyer” requests that the seller immediately wire, via Western Union, the excess funds to a third party “shipping agent” to cover shipping charges for the item purchased. If the seller wires the money as requested, he or she will lose that money when the counterfeit check bounces.
Nobody will arrive to claim the purchased item; these scammers are only interested in the cash.
Other versions of this scam involve phony inheritances, sweepstakes, loans, investments, apartment rentals, and even marriage proposals. If an Internet acquaintance from a foreign country asks you to cash a check and wire the funds as a favor, you are being scammed.
If you have received a Dort Financial Credit Union cashier’s check that you suspect is counterfeit, do not deposit or attempt to cash the check until you have verified its authenticity, and do not wire transfer any money to anybody.
In this scam, someone claiming to be from the Security and Fraud Department of a credit card company, calls to verify the 3-digit security code on the back of your credit card. Often, the thief will even know your address and the financial institution that issued the card. They will ask for the code “in order to verify that you are in possession of your card.” Don’t be fooled. In reality, they want the code so that they can use it to purchase goods and services online.
Anytime the U.S. Mail is used to further a crime, no matter how the crime originated, the crime is considered mail fraud. This often takes the form of illegal sweepstakes or foreign lottery notifications, phony credit card offers, and advance-fee loan schemes. In most cases, you are asked to either purchase something or pay fees up front before you can receive whatever prize or service the scam advertises.
You’re sitting in a hotel lobby, coffee shop, or air port and discover that you have no cell service. Your next thought is to connect to one of the dozen public Wi-Fi networks, but maybe you should think twice. Scam artists have been known to create fake public Wi-Fi networks and hotspots to take advantage of your personal information. The scammer has easy access to your personal accounts because the user most likely has to sign in to the network to get connected to the Wi-Fi. If you do choose to use public Wi-Fi networks verify that the connection is safe, and check with employees of the establishment to make sure you are signing in to the correct network. If you feel that the connection is not safe or are alerted to anything that feels out of place- the best thing to do is to not connect.
For more tips and guidelines, use the Federal Trade Commission website, www.onguardonline.gov. Consumers can take interactive quizzes designed to enlighten them about identity theft, phishing, smishing, spam, and online-shopping scams. Elsewhere on the site, consumers can find detailed guidance on how to monitor their credit histories, use effective passwords and recover from identity theft.
If you have additional questions on how to keep your account safe, or suspect you may have been the victim of fraud or identity theft, contact Dort Financial at 810.767.8390 or 800.521.3796 or come in to any of our offices, and we will assist you.
