Corporate Fraud and Internet Scams (cont.)

Corporate Fraud and the Change in Phishing Scams

In my last blog, we talked about phishing and other internet scams. Today, I want to talk about how phishing has changed and look at some other forms of corporate fraud.

It used to be that a misspelled company name in the URL was a sure sign that you were viewing a phishing email. But con-artists and corporate fraud masters have gotten more savvy with times. They’ve done their research and they are getting creative. Some of the things phishing emails use to look legitimate are:

  1. The real names of real people within a company.
  2. Legitimate looking email addresses in a common form used by many companies, like “support@yourfinancialinstitution.com”.
  3. Stolen logos and graphics.
  4. Links to pages on your real financial institution’s website.
  5. Official looking fine print and references to laws and compliance.

Fraudulent Corporate Websites that Mimic Legitimate Ones

Most of the time, these emails either want you to reply with sensitive personal or account information or they want you to click on a link to a corporate fraud website and enter your personal/account information. The link will take you to a website that looks exactly like your financial institution’s website. Several “urgent messages” are then used to get you to lower your guard out of fear of reprisal on your account. These urgent messages include:

  1. You must update your account information or your account will be shut down.
  2. Your account appears to be being used by another party and you must therefore verify your identity by providing account information.
  3. To protect your account from identity theft, security measures require you to verify all of your account information.
  4. Due to an update you need to reactivate your account.
  5. Recent law changes require all users to identify themselves.

The easiest way to protect yourself from this sort of fraud is never to enter information after clicking on a link from your email. You know how to get to your financial institution’s website without the help of an emailed link. Use that URL to go straight to your institution’s website if you are going to enter in any information. Read more about these fraud schemes at FINRA.org.

Continuing Deep into the Annals of Corporate Fraud

Join me for my next blog as I go into more types of internet and corporate fraud affecting investors and financial institutions world wide. Please, if you are not getting anywhere with resolving securities issues on your own, call S. David Anton of Anton Legal Group.

S. David Anton, Esquire is a Certified Arbitrator for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), formerly NASD, which is the national organization responsible for overseeing the securities industry. He has served as a Judge/Panelist and rendered decisions in many securities arbitration cases, giving him a unique perspective on his client’s individual situation.

FOR SECURITIES ADVICE, CONTACT DAVID ANTON AT THE ANTON LEGAL GROUP AT 813-443-5249.