Honesty and Integrity – Being Scammed
Tuesday, October 7th started off with a stint in the dentist’s chair, never a great start to any day, but way better than what transpired later in the day. After lunch I opened my computer desktop to be greeted by a flashing, beeping Windows page with an annoyingly loud female voice repeating itself over and over, “Security breach. Security breach. Your bank accounts and email address have been compromised.” Or words to that effect. Flashing warnings filled the screen, “Immediate action required! Do not try to close this message. Call the Windows Helpline below and follow the instructions given to secure your computer.” I managed to turn down the volume of the screeching voice but was unable to turn off the flashing screen.
Fearing a scam, I accessed the Windows Help desk number, but received only a recorded message with options that promised a long wait before being realised. So, I called the 08-00 number on the screen. The hyphen should have alerted us to an irregularity, but when you are undecided about whether or not you are being scammed and your bank accounts are being emptied, your mind freaks out either way.
The voice that answered the call was very calm and sophisticated and sympathised with my dilemma and assured us he was part of the Windows fraud team and could help secure my computer. He said he would call me on my cell phone. That was when the long journey towards being really scammed started. Firstly, he (he called himself Mike) said he would scan my computer to see what had been breached. This would take about 45 minutes, so in the meantime I was to download a site that would aid in fixing the problem. He sounded very knowledgeable and polite and I began to feel more confident that he was genuine. He said he was from Sri Lanka but had been in NZ for 14 years, hence his slight well-spoken accent. Having been an ESL teacher in the past, I had a fairly good ear for accents, and I remember thinking he sounded more like a Filipino than a Sri Lankan, but after 14 years an accent could change. That should have been another alert.
Mike then took me on a tour of various sites instructing me to click on various boxes and icons. He claimed he couldn’t see my screen but seemed to know exactly what was on it. Finally, the promised scan was completed, and he told me that my bank accounts and email had indeed been breached and would need to be secured immediately. By this time, I had been on the phone with him for over two hours, and my brain was becoming exhausted and starting to lack focus. It felt like we had gone this far, and it would soon be all fixed. He said the securing process would take some time, at which point a black screen appeared which he claimed was controlled by AI. He asked about the accounts he had to secure and told me to type on the ‘AI’ screen. Then a blank screen with a moving cursor appeared, which Mike assured me was part of the securing process. I was instructed to access my accounts and email and tell him if there had been any suspicious activity over the past month. There hadn’t been. Suddenly, the black ‘AI’ screen re-appeared with AI purportedly typing on it. Unfortunately, it made a simple spelling mistake and went back and corrected it. “That’s strange,” I thought, but when I questioned Mike about it, I was told that AI, being a human creation, sometimes made mistakes. Alert number 3, but my tired brain accepted such a lame explanation.
Then there was a declaration that Mike was also part of the NZ Government Fraud Office and would appreciate my cooperation in trying to determine the physical location of the hackers by making dummy small withdrawals from my accounts to try and lure the offenders into accessing my open accounts to steal money, thereby revealing their location. It seems like such an obvious scam now, but after being on the phone for four hours and not being that high up on the computer literacy scale, you start, or should I say, I started to believe strange things.
Alert number 4 manifested itself when I heard whispering on Mike’s side of the phone. I questioned Mike about it, but he said I was mistaken. However, although my brain was fuzzed out at the time, my hearing was not, and I know I heard whispering. So, I called the bank’s helpline and sure enough, the bank employee informed me that it was indeed a scam. I confronted Mike with this but he insisted he was with the fraud office, and he would replace the dummy withdrawals immediately, to prove his innocence. Of course, I didn’t believe him and hung up the phone, to be greeted by the bank officer’s words that the ‘pending’ withdrawals weren’t small as Mike had promised and neither could they be halted by the bank. This surprised me as I thought the bank security systems would pick up the irregularity of the ‘dummy’ withdrawals.
At first, I was stunned after five brain numbing hours on the phone and computer. Then the self-blaming and desire to punch myself in the face began. How could I have been so gullible? I had previously thought I could spot a scam a mile off and there I was feeling stupid and totally exhausted.
That night I tried to sleep by attempting to calm the invasion of negative thoughts scrambling around in my foggy brain. By morning I had failed, even for one minute, to bring the chaos in my mind under control by adopting a philosophical attitude – that it was only money and many people were in far worse-off positions than I was. I tried yoga breathing, meditation and even thoughts of forgiveness towards the hackers. Nothing gave me peace for more than a few minutes and indeed it took several days to cast off the feelings I had, of being invaded, of being stupid and of being angry that there were people in the world who spent their time doing such things, obviously with no regard for the destructive consequences of such actions.
That morning, I visited the two banks concerned to close my accounts and report what happened. Then it was off to the police station to make the required report. Now it was a matter of waiting to find out whether or not our money was gone forever into the pockets of the unscrupulous swindlers. My computer professional told me that a large part of his company’s business these days was dealing with increasingly sophisticated scams. At the request of the banks, he then cleaned my computer of all the bad stuff on it and secured all the files.
To their credit, both banks have since refunded my money after asking many questions about the scamming process. One bank explained that they were under no obligation to refund the money but did so because it was the first time I had been a scam victim and as a gesture of goodwill. They also sent me some very useful material about how to recognise a scam and what to do about it. I would recommend accessing your bank’s scam information and if you are not sure whether you are being scammed hang up or close your device. Apparently, the average scam reported in NZ is around $10,000, with some reaching into the millions. So please take care out there.
Words by Ross Liggins
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