Scam Alerts

"BUSH TAX REFUND" SCAM
Added 2/1/08 An alert has been issued by US Attorney’s Office in reference to the “Bush Tax Refund”. Several persons in South Carolina have reported they received telephone calls offering to automatically deposit the tax refunds promised in President Bush’s economic-stimulus plan. The problem is: The tax refunds aren’t real yet! Congress is still debating the plan. The scammers are trying to get bank account information. The calls seem similar as the scammers claim to be from the IRS or the tax department of Social Security Administration wanting to verify the consumer’s bank information to automatically deposit the “Bush tax refund” which ranges between $600.00 to $1,200.00.

The South Carolina Department of Consumer Affairs reported they have received more than 20 calls in reference to this scam. If our members contact you about receiving this type of telephone call, it is a scam, ask our member if they did furnish any account information. If the member tells you they gave their account number out, please contact Risk Management immediately. This should be handled the same as when a member reports their checks stolen or lost.

COUNTERFEIT FLORIDA TELCO CREDIT UNION CASHIER CHECKS
impAdded 1/22/08 | updated 2/19/08

If you receive what appears to be a Florida Telco Credit Union Cashier Check with a "you've won the lottery" letter, it is a counterfeit. Please do not try to cash it. Remember -- if you didn't play a lotter, you didn't win one!

 
Fake Caller ID Numbers
impAdded 9/27/07

In a new phishing scam, con artists are using phony caller ID numbers to solicit personal information and money. Thanks to the phony caller IDs, the "spoofers" are able to convince victims that they're receiving a call from a bank, credit union or credit card company. The scammers use this technique to acquire sensitive personal and financial information, or even money, from their victims.
callerID

The frightening aspect of this scam is that few people would ever think that the names and phone numbers appearing on their caller ID screens were not genuine. However, scammers are already using phony caller IDs and are posing as representatives of banks, credit card companies and government agencies. The problem has reached the point where Senator Bill Nelson from Florida is sponsoring legislation to ban the transmission of false caller ID numbers. "A similar bill has already sailed through the house," reports ABCnews.go.com.

Unfortunately, anyone with Internet access and a few dollars can find a number of legal online services that supply fake caller ID numbers. ScamBusters.org reports that it only took a few minutes of research to find several services that tout the "benefits" of caller ID spoofing.

How to protect yourself :

• Do not assume that the information displayed on your phone, regarding who the caller is, is accurate.
• Never give out personal or financial information over the telephone unless you know EXACTLY whom you're dealing with. If you have doubts about who's on the phone, call back the number of record at your financial institution or credit card company.

Added 8/28/07
Email Scam: Phishing. If you receive an email that looks like this, DO NOT click on the link or enter any information, just delete it.

Dear Member,

The Florida Credit Union Online Dept. temporarily suspended your account.
After three unsuccessful login attempts (wrong PIN) using Info 24 Service
to transfer funds to another account, your account has been temporarily
disabled until further investigations. All cards (except the temporary cards) from this account are suspended.

You must reactivate your Florida Credit Union account in order to use your
cards again and avoid any future problems, accounts blockage or suspension.

Once you have completed these steps, we will send you an email notifying
that your account is available again. The information you provide us is all
non-sensitive and anonymous. No part of it is handed down to any third party.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience. [They're not sorry at all, they want your money!]

To continue please click the link below:
https://pcu.flcu.org/asp/USERS/Common/Login/NetLogin.asp

[While this "text" is the real "text" of the legitimate link, if you were to click on it then look up in the address bar, you'd see that it re-routed to another URL: http://www.cruzandoculturas.com/flcu/index.html, which is a fake site that was "spoofed" or copied to look exactly like the site Florida Credit Union members are familiar with. Many financial institutions are targeted here -- this time it was Florida Credit Union in Gainesville -- it could be Florida Telco tomorrow. BE SMART! ALWAYS call us if you even suspect an email or site could be fraudulent.]

Copyright © 2007 Florida Credit Union. All rights reserved [<-- yes, they even copied the copyright!]

Your best bet is to always check the URL that pops up after you click on a link -- that's the address found here:

or

The above two address are vaild. If even one letter, or "dot" is different from the two above, you're not on our site! (We also own the .com domain which will automatically re-route you to the .org.)

How this is possible. When creating links on a webpage, you can type whatever you want -- in the case of scams, they type in the real URL address, but they use code to actually link the text to their fraudulent site. You can avoid these sites altogether by always typing in the URL you know to be correct. An example would be: I can Type any text I want here. If you click on that, you're headed to our home page, not Any Text Land. It's that simple for scam artists to fake a legitimate link.

For your convenience, the direct link for Florida Telco Credit Union is: http://www.floridatelco.org

And Private PC is:

https://ppc.floridatelco.org/asp/USERS/Common/Login/NetLogin.asp