There is a new scam in town! Fraudsters now generate fake SMS credit alerts to defraud unsuspecting people.
Eko Hot Blog reports that Victor Isibor, a YouTuber, has raised the alarm over a new app used by fraudsters to scam sellers.
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In a YouTube video, he narrated the situation of a car dealer who sold a car and received a fake credit alert of the purchase, but the money never entered his account.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8CnOQQo0Vu/?igsh=MTkybDJ3MDcwbTM3cQ==
By the time the seller realized, the buyers/fraudsters were long gone.
The said app, Pro Bank, is not available on the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. Therefore, Eko Hot Blog could not independently ascertain how it functions.
However, Isibor explained that the app takes into cognizance the amount of money you have in your account, your existing balance, then it adds the amount of money the fraudster sends to you, does the mathematics and you will see the total.
“That means that with this particular application, a scammer can walk into your business place, get goods and services from you, send you cash, you get an alert from your bank and they walk away,” he said.
“With this application, PoS operators are in trouble. Somebody can come to you, transfer cash to you, you get an alert and you give them raw cash and they walk away.
“You never get to discover until you try to make a withdrawal from your bank account, because that is when you will know they didn’t send you anything.”
SECURITY MEASURES TO PROTECT YOURSELF
Isibor volunteered security measures to take as a safeguard against the scam.
“To keep yourself safe from this scam, one, if you are doing business in this time and age, you have no business using mobile phones that are not Internet-enabled,” he said.
“You need to download the mobile application of your bank, so that when money is sent, you will be able to check online if the money has truly landed in your account.
“SMS credit alert is no longer enough for you to confirm they have paid you.”
Nnamdi Christian, another content creator, explained how to identify a fake SMS alert generated by the scam app.
“The way to know it is to look for Pro Bank in the alert. They built this app for pranks,” he said.
“But it is still new and not everybody knows about Pro Bank.
FURTHER READING
“If you are a PoS operator, anybody that wants to do transfer to you, just ask the person you want to see the app or you wait and once you receive alert if the alert carries something like Pro Bank, then just know that it is fake.”
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