As if worrying about fraudulent emails and text messages wasn’t enough, fraudsters are impersonating institutional fraud departments to defraud clients. (For example, Schwab banks and brokers)
Imposters posing as employees, contact clients via phone, email or text based on personal information they obtained on the dark web or social media. They then spoof their institution’s phone number to call and purport to be the Fraud Department reporting a fraudulent transaction. They convince clients to provide login and SMS codes which they use to highjack the account credentials and proceed to initiate unauthorized transactions.
You can help mitigate this fraud by following these steps below:
Do not provide any personal identifying information in an email or over the phone, even if you think you are talking to your institution. You can verify that you are speaking with your institution by ending the call and calling a phone number that is known to you or you find from a trusted source.
If you receive an SMS text code to verify account access, do not share this with anyone, as legitimate representatives will never ask for this information.
Please report all suspicious or fraudulent activity.