Phone Scam

[blackpowder]

I would like the whole story out someday for publication protection and not buried for banks protection.

[beaverdam]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/family-farm-port-out-scam-1.5443580 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/family-farm-port-out-scam-1.5443580

I didn't take notes but,,, from what I heard on the radio interview with the family yesterday,,, sounds like hackers transferred their provider from SaskTel to another carrier. At that point they were locked out of their phones and email, this was on a Thursday or Friday. They just thought there were network problems. The criminals then made bank transfers using their email.

Right now no one is stepping up to make them whole for their losses. Bank says transfers were made with their email,,, phone company says they didn't have any restrictions on changing carriers. RCMP still investigating.

They say this could happen regardless of carrier, not just SaskTel. They are suggesting that you tell your carrier not to allow a port-out(which basically means change carriers) without being in person and having appropriate id. Also seems they didn't have any restrictions on their bank, regarding amounts or frequency of money being transferred out of their account.

Sounds like it was a fair chunk of money.

[grassfarmer]

I guess I must be easily confused as well Grassfarmer, the first sentence in the CBC article: A family of Saskatchewan farmers is sounding the alarm bells after they had hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen from their family farm's "bank account" and they say they're not alone. So is that a bank account or a phone account?!?!

The hackers transferred their phone carrier from Sasktel to Telus before proceeding to drain the bank account. The family seem more upset with the phone company than the bank.

Here is the Facebook post from the Johnson family. You can find "Johnson Livestock" if you're on FB and read the accompanying comments for yourself. One interesting comment is that the bank doesn't have fraud protection on business accounts, only on personal ones. Not sure if that's true but i'll be making enquiries at my banking institutions.

"The cows are loving this week but it’s been a bit chaotic for the rest of us. This post is a vulnerable one to share but we also feel the importance of getting this information out there in a timely matter because there are still criminals working hard affecting people within our province as we speak.

Last week Anne noticed that her phone wasn’t working but we didn’t think much about it throughout the day assuming it was just an inconvenient glitch with technology. Sasktel informed us that her number had been ported out to another carrier (Telus) and when we insisted that it was not us who initiated that, they spent the day working to get her number and service back. In the meantime she also realized that her email address no longer worked. Cell service was restored and we assumed that all was fine until a call from the bank Monday morning. There had been a series of transfers from our farm account until every last dollar was drained, in the hundreds of thousands.

We aren’t naming the bank involved as their fraud department has been working overtime and we are very satisfied currently with the urgency this is being handled with. We also don’t want them to be bombarded with calls that will take time away from a very time sensitive investigation.

The worst part about this is there were multiple scenarios over the last week exactly like ours through the province. In order for someone to steal your phone number (and essentially your identity) they need minimal information. Sasktel informed me that the reason for this is that they don’t want to make it difficult for people who wish to switch carriers. This is not okay when it compromises your security. It just takes a simple phone call to Sasktel to have them change your account so that you must go sign in person in order to transfer to another carrier. We are urging anyone who has a phone with Sasktel to do this, and if you have another wireless provider, check what security measures they have in place.

We know there are others in a similar situation to us right now and we hope that this will initiate public knowledge of the necessity of going above and beyond with security measures. For us, our use of technology will be drastically changing going forward."

[AllisWD45]

Know the family. Salt of the earth people and a pleasure to deal with. They wouldn't know how to or have time to bullshit.Just makes you wonder what can be dreamed up as a scam.

[helmsdale]

Had this happen to myself.

We can all thank the governments super protected servers for our information being out and about.

The hackers got my information *most likely* from student loan databases that were breached a few years ago. SIN, full name, name of cosignors, date of birth, previous employers, last known address, etc all accessed. I say most likely because credit bureau's told me that they had a trove of government information that MANY people were getting hammered with.

With that information, they were able to start digging elsewhere. They were able to piece most of my life together from shit that was available with "secret questions" and gaining access to various other vaults of information from there.

Once they had enough information to get ahold of my credit rating to see that it was VERY good, they were then able to pull the information that the credit departments had, and from there they decided to go on a tear...

First notice I had of anything wrong was a letter from Walmart Security/collections saying that I was $4,000 behind on my credit card. I don't have a walmart credit card! They started a fraud investigation, and informed me that someone living in Ontario had forged a government issued drivers license with their *current* address which was simply a property up for sale on realtor.ca, where from there they were able to apply for a walmart credit card, charge the baby to the hilt, and then leave the balance outstanding. From there, Walmart started digging and found the address that I had prior to this Ontario address was in Alberta, so they sent a rather nasty letter saying I had to respond by a certain date, or I would be taken to court.

I managed to get that mostly all cleared up, sometime last summer...

Then this is where the story gets relevant to the thread... I tried to use my phone one morning to order combine parts, and it said that I was no longer connected to the network. So i tried calling my phone from the land line, and it rang, but said the voicemail had not been set up. Well, thats odd, I had a rather cheeky voicemail that hadnt changed for 2 or 3 years.

I called Rogers from the landline, and after going through all the steps to verify my Identity(which i now realize could be done by anybody who had a credit report, or hacked government documents), they informed me that my phone number had been ported out to Bell in Ontario.

Within an hour, I had emails from Amazon, and Ebay saying that my password had been changed. I sure as hell didnt do it... They used my phone as the "second confirmation" when resetting passwords, and thank christ I had an expired credit card on file, so they weren't able to charge anything to it.

Roger's was excellent through this process, and they said this was one of the first cases of this that they had ever seen. With government regulation saying that people are now free to take their phone numbers to any carrier that they desire, and there is nothing they can do about it. They cannot confirm independently that it is you that is doing it, they cannot contact you to try and keep you from going elsewhere, and they are left with no other option but to "react" when the customer phones in saying their phone is dead. So long as someone can "prove" that they are you, they are able to take your phone number away from you and port it to another carrier, and then use that phone number to recieve number of text messages proving that "you are indeed you" on the accounts that you have set up... Within another hour I had an email from Microsoft saying that they suspected my accounts were trying to be hacked and they recommended password changes.

Thank christ for vhf radios... I lived for a week without any access to cellular phone at harvest time. Had to radio home for the wife to order parts, or give weather updates, etc...

Once they port you out, your SIM is DEAD! It wasn't a matter of just them asking for my # back. Since it was the middle of harvest and I live nowhere near a Rogers store to pick up a new SIM, i had to wait for them to Express Courier out a new SIM, and then got a temporary phone number, then they were able to port the number back.

Inside of 2 hours, my old phone number wouldn't even ring anymore, and simply said the number was unassigned...

This is getting to be commonplace shit nowadays!

[helmsdale]

Only thing you can do, is basically phone into your service provider and request that they port protect your phone. Request that if a port forward comes in, they are able to contact you to ensure that you are indeed taking your number elsewhere.

The other MUST is that you PIN PROTECT your account. And honest to christ keep it random, and change it regularly. DO NOT use something that could come up in your credit history, such as partents phone numbers, home number, old street address, etc!

[Guest]

but...... how can you email that much money out of a bank acct ??????? i really don't understand?????

[grassfarmer]

Yikes, that's a scary story Helmsdale. Good discussions to be having bringing this stuff to light so people can better protect themselves.

[jazz]

but...... how can you email that much money out of a bank acct ??????? i really don't understand?????

Obviously a bunch of smaller daily withdrawals over time. $10k a day is the max from my business account. Maybe they requested higher limits. But a bank would advise against that. Any bank I know that saw $10k a day coming out for 20 business days would be all over that.

I one time used a credit card 3 times in a row at an airport pay phone and rbc locked all my accounts down.

[helmsdale]

but...... how can you email that much money out of a bank acct ??????? i really don't understand?????

Only thing that comes to mind is the idea that they had their "limits" set sky high... With increased convenience generally comes corresponding risk.

Who knows...

Hackers and thiefs are always at the forefront. If they were able to port their number, it means they had government issued picture ID. They likely had SIN's, date of births, etc just like they had on me, which means they can walk into a bank in Toronto and say they recently moved there. Who is the bank to argue with someone that has all the sensitive personal details about you, as well as government issued photo ID, when you demand to withdraw your funds? It would be slightly more difficult if you were to claim to them that you "forgot" your PIN number, but there is likely a process to go through that will allow you to reset your PIN. And guess what, It'll likely depend on that "sensitive personal information" that only YOU are supposed to know.

Photo ID isn't worth shit these days. Unless, the individual asking to see your ID, has a current photo of YOU, that is actually YOU to compare it to, all that photo ID means is that the *person* presenting the ID matches the picture of what that worthless piece of plastic says YOU look like.

[sumdumguy]

People working in banks have all your information - maybe not your pin just saying. Its no longer your next door neighbour from small town Saskatchewan. It concerns me to give all this info to unknowns that are there today but gone tomorrow morning.

[sumdumguy]

Also there are 10 day holds before the money can be withdrawn?

[shtferbrains]

The hackers transferred their phone carrier from Sasktel to Telus before proceeding to drain the bank account. The family seem more upset with the phone company than the bank.

Here is the Facebook post from the Johnson family. You can find "Johnson Livestock" if you're on FB and read the accompanying comments for yourself. One interesting comment is that the bank doesn't have fraud protection on business accounts, only on personal ones. Not sure if that's true but i'll be making enquiries at my banking institutions.

"The cows are loving this week but it’s been a bit chaotic for the rest of us. This post is a vulnerable one to share but we also feel the importance of getting this information out there in a timely matter because there are still criminals working hard affecting people within our province as we speak.

Last week Anne noticed that her phone wasn’t working but we didn’t think much about it throughout the day assuming it was just an inconvenient glitch with technology. Sasktel informed us that her number had been ported out to another carrier (Telus) and when we insisted that it was not us who initiated that, they spent the day working to get her number and service back. In the meantime she also realized that her email address no longer worked. Cell service was restored and we assumed that all was fine until a call from the bank Monday morning. There had been a series of transfers from our farm account until every last dollar was drained, in the hundreds of thousands.

We aren’t naming the bank involved as their fraud department has been working overtime and we are very satisfied currently with the urgency this is being handled with. We also don’t want them to be bombarded with calls that will take time away from a very time sensitive investigation.

The worst part about this is there were multiple scenarios over the last week exactly like ours through the province. In order for someone to steal your phone number (and essentially your identity) they need minimal information. Sasktel informed me that the reason for this is that they don’t want to make it difficult for people who wish to switch carriers. This is not okay when it compromises your security. It just takes a simple phone call to Sasktel to have them change your account so that you must go sign in person in order to transfer to another carrier. We are urging anyone who has a phone with Sasktel to do this, and if you have another wireless provider, check what security measures they have in place.

We know there are others in a similar situation to us right now and we hope that this will initiate public knowledge of the necessity of going above and beyond with security measures. For us, our use of technology will be drastically changing going forward."

The bank has come good on Andrew's major loss in this situation.

Has to be some great relief to them.

All I can think is how easy it is to change a forgotten password if you have the email access to receive the new one.

Just had a conversation with some others who have also had problems getting 10K+ cash from your bank when your standing at the teller and the money is in your account. ?????

[blackpowder]

Just got off the phone with Telus.
They are aware of this.
But you have to call in and request port blocking. After the legislation allowing consumers to keep their number when switching.

Get er done people!!

[beaverdam]

Heard this afternoon that BMO will replace the funds stolen, from these ranchers.