Bob:
The other day I received an SMS with the text “$ 10 credited”, then the name of the bank was written, as if someone had replenished the balance. Sometimes my son sends me money like that, but he has never sent $ 10 before. I decided that it was he who replenished the balance in advance - maybe he was going on a business trip or something else. I put my phone down and went about my business.
However, after a while I heard the message signal again. Opened - and there: "Mistakenly replenished the wrong number, return, please". I thought: well, a muddler, he doesn't check where he is sending! Then I decided to call my son, to clarify whether he replenished my account.
The son says that he did nothing of the kind. No money, they say, do not return, sit still. But my soul is out of place: I have lived my whole life honestly, I didn’t take someone else’s, and here I am profiting from someone else’s mistake. I myself am not very friendly with technology - I called a colleague and asked him to borrow $ 10 and toss it to the account of the person who confused the number. A colleague helped out.
But then the son calls back and asks: have you checked the balance? Is there this money in the account? And then I finally looked - no $ 10 came to me at all. My colleague's money, it turns out, got to the crooks - it's a shame awful.
Financial Culture Expert:
The amount that fraudsters ask to "return" usually ranges from $ 2 to $ 15, since this is not such a lot of money for the victim to start proceedings because of them. If the fraudster thinks that his interlocutor hesitates, he begins to put pressure on emotions, appeals to pity, sympathy and justice. Having increased the reach of the mailing list to dozens of people, scammers may well collect a substantial amount.
What to do if you received an SMS with a request to return the money mistakenly transferred to you
If you replenish your phone account through the terminal, always take the check - it can be used by scammers to contact the operator and "return" your money to themselves.
The other day I received an SMS with the text “$ 10 credited”, then the name of the bank was written, as if someone had replenished the balance. Sometimes my son sends me money like that, but he has never sent $ 10 before. I decided that it was he who replenished the balance in advance - maybe he was going on a business trip or something else. I put my phone down and went about my business.
However, after a while I heard the message signal again. Opened - and there: "Mistakenly replenished the wrong number, return, please". I thought: well, a muddler, he doesn't check where he is sending! Then I decided to call my son, to clarify whether he replenished my account.
The son says that he did nothing of the kind. No money, they say, do not return, sit still. But my soul is out of place: I have lived my whole life honestly, I didn’t take someone else’s, and here I am profiting from someone else’s mistake. I myself am not very friendly with technology - I called a colleague and asked him to borrow $ 10 and toss it to the account of the person who confused the number. A colleague helped out.
But then the son calls back and asks: have you checked the balance? Is there this money in the account? And then I finally looked - no $ 10 came to me at all. My colleague's money, it turns out, got to the crooks - it's a shame awful.
Financial Culture Expert:
The amount that fraudsters ask to "return" usually ranges from $ 2 to $ 15, since this is not such a lot of money for the victim to start proceedings because of them. If the fraudster thinks that his interlocutor hesitates, he begins to put pressure on emotions, appeals to pity, sympathy and justice. Having increased the reach of the mailing list to dozens of people, scammers may well collect a substantial amount.
What to do if you received an SMS with a request to return the money mistakenly transferred to you
- Check how much money is in your account.
- If your balance has not changed, check the number from which the message came. Transfers from online banking services, other people's accounts, operator credits come from short numbers. A message about crediting money from an ordinary mobile phone is a sign of malicious intent.
- When a similar SMS came from a "private trader", write or call the technical support of your operator. All telecom companies have a security service that blacklists fraudulent numbers and passes them on to the police.
If you replenish your phone account through the terminal, always take the check - it can be used by scammers to contact the operator and "return" your money to themselves.
