'Slick' $62K banking scam stopped by CIBC staff in LaSalle, Ont.
An Ontario woman was briefly bilked out of $62,000 last week before fast-acting bank staff realized she had been scammed, reversed the transfer and called police.
Police in LaSalle, Ont., a town just west of Windsor, say an elderly woman fell victim to a phone scam that looked and sounded legitimate.
LaSalle police spokesman Const. Harbinder Gill said the woman received a call from what appeared to be a CIBC phone number and spoke to two men. One identified himself as a senior supervisor before transferring the victim to someone who said they were a head manager.
The two worked to secure enough personal and banking information from the woman to begin transferring money from the victim's account to their own, all while she was still on the phone.
"These guys are slick and quick," Gill said.
The first man questioned the woman about a $600 purchase made in China. The woman disputed the purchase and when asked for her CIBC client card number, she gave it up.
She was then transferred to another man who claimed to be the head manager of client services. While this conversation was happening, transactions had already started. Money was being transferred between her personal accounts and then out of those accounts to what is believed to be the scam artists' bank accounts, police said.
The call lasted about 45 minutes.
Gill said police checked the number that appeared on the victim's digital call display and it was a legitimate CIBC number.
Gill said the number was likely "spoofed."
Using "caller ID spoofing," callers can deliberately falsify the telephone number and/or name relayed as the Caller ID information to disguise the identity of the calling party.
Gill said the woman quickly contacted her bank, the LaSalle branch of the CIBC, and staff there could reverse the transfers that happened just hours before.
Gill said had the woman waited, the bank would not have been able to help because the transaction would have been too old to reverse. The bank could reverse the transfer on the same business day.
Gill said the scam is a new one police were unaware of and that police are still investigating.
