Credit Card Interest Rate Scam Funny
The scam call offering to lower my credit card interest rate came early in the day, before normal working hours. But after being assigned to work at home like millions of other employees worldwide during this time of COVID-19, what defines the normal work day is in flux.
Twenty minutes later, the scammer hung up, saying he was done wasting his time. But, not before laying out how the scheme worked and how often it was successful.
Granted, this was a scammer. He could have been fibbing even as he detailed the scheme, which he said is called the "LI scam" in industry-speak.
A representative from the fraud team at Visa said the scheme seemed familiar. Credit card companies have long battled such attempts to fish for cardholders' information, the representative said.
According to the scammer said, banks are the real targets of this scam. The gullible public are just conduits to get to those institutions' cash.
It's not clear if more people are picking up these calls with more people working at home, relying on their mobile phones and what landlines are left to make calls, rather than office lines. A different scammer who called me Thursday said he'd noticed more people answering calls and listening to his pitch over the past two weeks. But the man I spoke with on Friday said it was about the same.
Visa and MasterCard, as well as the Federal Trade Commission, have advice about scams on their websites.
The government tells customers that they likely have as much pull to lower their interest rate than any third-party. Visa and MasterCard say that customers should never give out their personal information or account data over the phone.
Credit card companies have long battled such attempts to fish for cardholders' information, said Lori Hodges, a vice president of the risk department at Visa.
She said this scheme seemed at a low-level of sophistication.
Over the past year, she said, Visa has seen a rise in highly sophisticated frauds. The scammer calls armed with some personal information, a name, address, or even a credit card number, and uses that to prod for more, Hodges said.
Databases with such information are sold on the so-called dark web, she said.
But, no matter the sophistication level, Hodges said credit card holders should keep a basic fact in mind: A bank will not ask for personal information over the phone. Presumably, since they issued the credit, banks already have that information. Any questions, she said, would be yes or no questions to validate that information.
The Friday call, like most of these scam calls, purported to come from a local area code. I answered and heard that familiar robotic voice that claimed to be from Visa and MasterCard card services.
It assured me, as all these calls do, that there was no problem, but that I had an offer to lower my interest rate and needed to act now to take advantage of it. It asked me to press one.
Here's where most right-thinking people, smelling a scam, hang up. But professional curiosity spurred me to forge ahead.
Last year, I was able to get a man in India to explain how the "Social Security scam" worked.
That's the one that starts with the urgent-sounding message that your number has been used in a crime and that you must call back to remedy the situation.
The caller is told that their assets would be frozen for days or weeks. And that if they want to use their funds, they need to withdraw cash from their bank and use it to buy gift cards at Target or Wal-Mart. The scammer, I was told, stays on the phone with their victim until they make the purchase, ensuring they don't talk to anyone else who might jolt them back to reality.
This credit card interest scam is not as involved. Making it potentially more likely someone falls for it. And potentially more lucrative.
After I pressed one, a man started running through a script about how he could lower the interest rates on my credit cards.
I started asking him about his working conditions and whether his employer was taking precautions to make sure he and others didn't contract the new coronavirus. The man alternately said he was working from home, then in an office, then, flustered, handed me off to his supervisor.
And it would be that person who gave more information.
The supervisor – I didn't get the fake name he used – told me he was at an office in Kabul, Afghanistan. Again, there was no way to verify this. I asked him how the weather was there and he told me it was cold, which matched up with online forecasts.
After some parrying, the supervisor told me that he does not make any attempt to lower a customers' interest rates. What he does is try to max out customers' credit cards and keep the money.
The scammer draws out information from their potential victim. First the basics, the expiration date and full 16-digit card number. Along with the three digit security code on the back.
If that number proves to be valid when checked, the scammer said, they fish for more information.
They ask for a home address, email and mothers' maiden name. All the types of questions someone from a credit card company might ask to verify a potentially fraudulent purchase. I wasn't able to get the scammer to describe in detail how that information is used.
The supervisor said the victim's card is charged to its limit. The money goes to a fake merchant the scammers have set up. The merchant is changed frequently so the credit card companies don't track it.
The idea, the supervisor said, was that the victims would be able to reverse the charges on the card, leaving the bank on the hook.
"We're scamming banks, not customers," he said.
Of the thousands of robocalls made each day, only about 300 get to the call center, he said. Of those, he said, about three or four people each day become victims.
The successful scammers, who aren't paid hourly, get 30% of whatever the fraudulent take was, he said.
"It's not honest," he said. "It's fraud, total fraud." The supervisor said he didn't give a care about his victims, although he substituted a more colorful word.
The supervisor said turnover at the call center was fairly high. Someone learns quickly whether they have the chops to pull off the scam on a regular basis.
"It all depends on your training," he said. "It depends on your skills."
The supervisor said that speaking English with as little accent as possible was also a plus.
He said that he mastered English during his eight months on the job.
Though, he said he didn't know the meaning of the word "gullible." As when I asked him what made people in the United States so gullible.
"What does that mean?" he said. "Never heard that before. Teach me."
I reworded it. What made people fall for the scam?
"I cannot tell you exactly," he said. "Convincing skills. That's it."
Then, he signaled he was done.
"Have a wonderful day," he said. Then, he hung up.
Incidentally, he said the call center he was at was filled with 30 to 40 people. And, no, they weren't following social-distancing guidelines.
Source: https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/consumers/2020/03/21/heres-how-credit-card-interest-rate-robocall-scam-works/2888308001/
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