Bologna, Police recover 300 thousand euros stolen from the bank accounts of unsuspecting victims via smishing

Bologna, There are numerous customers of credit institutions with home banking operations who are victims of fraudulent transactions, carried out through sophisticated smishing techniques; from December to today there have been many complaints received by the Postal Police from citizens who have been affected by this phenomenon, for a total amount of almost 500.000 defrauded euros.

The phenomenon, in continuous evolution, generally takes place in two steps.

The user receives an SMS message, apparently sent by his own bank, containing notices of suspicious movements or problems accessing the home banking service and is invited to click on a link that actually refers to a clone site of the institution bank, through which he is induced to enter his credentials (username, password, mobile phone number, tax code and e-mail address).

To this end, the criminals contact the victims by telephone or SMS using a telephone number that is detected by the cellular devices as referable to that of the Bank (the operating systems of the cellular devices identify only the sender entered by the scammers and not the number used) ; this circumstance leads users to believe that they are in contact with real officials of the credit institutions.

Therefore, instructions are given to customers aimed at having the application for accessing their home banking positions removed, which is immediately reinstalled by the scammers who thus take complete control of the current accounts.

Recently, there has been a further evolution of the criminal phenomenon which consists in moving the sums present in the affected current accounts through the execution of online postal bulletins.

This method, unlike bank transfers, has the advantage for criminals of being able to move even large sums of money with operations that cannot be revoked by the user.

The destination of these sums to “special” financial items have been the subject of specific investigations by investigators which have made it possible to block (and promptly recover) the stolen cash flows on many occasions.

These are the cases of various users who, after having been contacted via SMS on their respective telephone number and having uninstalled, at the invitation of the scammers, the APP of their bank, have suffered the subtraction of 43.000 euros, direct, through the issuance of postal bills. , on a postal account in which more than 126.000 euros were held, coming from other illegal operations.

The investigations, conducted by the Bologna Postal Police and coordinated by the Rome Postal and Communications Police Service, under the direction of the Bologna Public Prosecutor's Office, made it possible to block the flow of money and verify that there were suspicious remittances attributable to similar scams to the detriment of numerous account holders resident in Turin, Brescia, Milano, Teramo and Cagliari, who had their current accounts emptied for sums ranging between 10 and 50.000 euros.

Many of the victims, upset by the incident, and in fear of incurring other criminal episodes, did not respond to calls to their users, not even to the Postal Police Operators who wanted to inform them that the stolen money had been recovered.

For the development of the investigations in the cases described, the collaboration of various Poste Italiane SpA structures was indispensable, which collaborated in the financial analyzes and the procedures for returning the sums to the victims.

SOME SIMPLE INFORMATION TO AVOID FALLING INTO ERROR

It is important to remember that banks NEVER send emails, text messages or call on the phone to ask you to provide your home banking or app access credentials, credit card details or changes to your personal data.

If you receive emails, text messages or phone calls asking you to provide bank details, call your bank immediately and contact the Postal Police:

– do not open attachments or links contained in emails or text messages;

– always keep your antivirus and operating system updated.

For further information and reports on any suspected cases go to: www.commissariatodips.it