It Starts with a Dollar | Ep.02 | Fraud w/Wes

Fraud can happen to anyone — but knowing what to do makes all the difference. In this episode, Wes Congo joins It Starts with a Dollar to break down today’s most common scams, what steps to take if something goes wrong, and how to protect yourself before fraud strikes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to It Starts with a Dollar, Real Talk About Financial Freedom. I'm Krista Cooper, and this is a series with our friends at Dover Federal Credit Union where we talk about the money stuff that actually affects your everyday life. So today's topic is something that can happen to literally anyone card fraud and scams. And you might think this won't happen to me, but the reality is scammers are getting smarter every day and it's all around us. So we brought in an expert, Wes Congo. He is the cards and fraud manager at Dover Federal Credit Union. And he sees firsthand what people are dealing with, and more importantly, how to protect yourself. So, Wes, welcome. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:37

I'm doing well. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Of course. All right, fraud and scams are something that we're all hearing about more and more. Um, so we're gonna break down what to watch for.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

What to do if something happens, and of course, how Dover Federal is working to protect its members. So we're gonna jump right in and start with scams because I feel like they're everywhere right now.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

For sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

And so, what are some of the most common types of scams that you're seeing, and what can people do to protect themselves?

SPEAKER_00 1:05

To be honest, scam new scams are coming out every day. It's just the reality of things. But a lot of things that we see on our end are like romance scams. What you what you'll find is, or what we happen to see, is you know, there may be individuals, right, who they'll get reached out to by someone and say, hey, you know, online dating, right? Say, hey, you know, I'm a I'm a prince in Egypt. You know, I'm just trying to get over to the States. I want to, you know, I'd like to meet you. They'll talk over months and months, and they're like, oh, well, I can't get over there until you send me such and such amount of money, right? Turns into hundreds of thousands of dollars or whatever the case may be. And people just really think that they're in love with this prince that doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

And they've already sent the money.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

And they've already sent the money, right? And then when someone becomes aware of it, then they'll come to us and say, Hey, they did all of these things and and they were scammed, right? And it's like it's tough for us. It puts us in a bad position because it's like, yeah, we want you to have your money back, but what can we do at this point, right? And there is the money, right? Exactly. So it's like it's tough on everybody's end because everybody wants their money back, and we don't have we can't chase the money. Right, exactly. In a lot of cases, sometimes sometimes we can, you know, we do our due diligence, we try, yeah, right. But a lot of cases, once it's gone, it's gone.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

It's gone. I know that is so scary. All right, we're gonna jump over a little bit to understand the differences between a dispute and a fraud because I think this probably confuses a lot of people, absolutely, including myself. Uh, what's the difference then between a dispute and a fraud, and why does it matter um which one a consumer like a customer's reporting?

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Right. So, similar to what I was saying before about the fraud and the scams, disputes are transactions that you initiated that you aren't satisfied with. Gotcha. Right. Okay. Fraud is you didn't initiate that transaction. Yeah. It's really just that basic, right? A lot of people will, if you know, they're not satisfied with the transaction, they'll say, Oh, I didn't do this. But but you did. Right. Right. So it's like, you know, don't you don't want to file a fraud claim because you you're the likelihood is you're gonna lose that fraud claim. We're gonna do an investigation on all of those things. We're gonna see that you you signed for it or whatever the case may be. A lot of people go to, you know, some people might go to dinner and not happy with that transaction. They call later, like, hey, you know, I didn't authorize this because this isn't what I wanted. And I get what they're trying to say, right? It's like I didn't order this specific thing or like Amazon, right? They send the wrong, they send the wrong product or whatever. But you did initiate the transaction, so you want to dispute it, not claim it as fraud. Gotcha. Right. Because you you want to the it it's a it's an argument back and forth between you and that merchant to say, hey, you didn't do this right thing, so I want to get my money back, right? Right. Fraud on the other hand is someone took your card information, account information, whatever it may be, and initiated a transaction that you knew nothing about until you you were made aware, right? Either you saw it or we reached out to you or what it whatever it may be.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Right.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

All right, so if someone uses their credit card versus their debit card, is there a difference then between how that transaction is then handled in a fraud or a dispute?

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Yeah, certainly. So want to use your credit card more, right? For it's I don't want to say less risky, right? Because it there's always risk, but the chances of you getting your funds back on a credit card are are more likely because of it because of the chargeback rights and the and the laws that go into place when it comes to credit versus debit. Okay. Right. So we try to push for credit card transactions. If you don't have a credit card, obviously that's not an option. But credit card is probably the way to go when it as far as your protection. Interesting. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

All right, so there really is kind of a difference there. I see really stress uh customer education at Dover Federal, which of course is so important and part of what you know what we're doing here today. But what kind of things are you doing to help members then recognize the scams before they become victims?

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Um well what what we would suggest our members do, and and anybody, honestly, is to hold tight to your personal information, right? Don't disclose those things, especially on a call, right? Because if someone's calling you to ask you for these things, it's probably ill and tent. But financial institutions do not call out and start asking those questions right away, right? Right. There is some verification that's necessary in some of those calls, but we're not calling to ask for those, ask those questions and ask for that information. You don't want to, when someone does call you, um, I know it's it's a lot of pressure, right? You're in the moment on that call. It could be in the middle of the work day and you're trying to get you're trying to get through it, right? But don't don't uh fall for that pressure, right? Okay. That's big. Because it's it's just them trying to get you, you know, they know the times. A lot of times when they're doing their research, they know when to call people, when not to call people, what's what's the best time to contact them so that they can rush you into doing the wrong thing, right? Right. Don't fall for that pressure because it's just it's just the pressure of them trying to get to your your funds or or your information as quickly as possible. And it's not always about what's in your bank account, right? It could be just them trying to get your information so that they can create a a bank account or get a credit card or or that kind of thing, right? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So we gotta be careful about that. We gotta think about those things and and the information that they're asking is always personal information, such as your mother's maiden name, such as high school that you uh went to, things that are are identifiable by you and and that are personal to you.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

Yeah, you're not thinking in the moment, like a person care where I went to high school.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Right, right. And you're you're just thinking of security questions. That's the reality, right? But a lot of times it's security questions that you didn't even give away anyway, right? It's it's things that you think that they already know, but they don't know. They don't know they're trying to get the information, yeah. So you just don't want to fall for that, you know. Protect everything, protect your your personal information, protect your passwords, yeah, protect everything. Just I mean, granted, people, spouses and things like that, they they share information, but if you don't have to share it, don't share it. Spouse or not, right? So, you know, sibling, parent, none of that, none of those things. You know, you you see a lot of elder abuse out there from you know, their own children kind of taking advantage of them because they have their information. I've seen a case recently where someone was a neighbor, right? They were just a close neighbor, they lived around them for 20, 30 years, but they saw an opportunity, they started taking advantage of that person, right? So you got to keep your information, right? It's the the the less information that's out there, the better for you. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 7:11

Well, and I was gonna say too, and I'm not saying that that this would be somebody trying to get your information, but I've seen posts on social media where they talk about like what street did you grow up on, you know, and you don't think about those things. But the moment you put that out there, you you're putting out some information that you touched on are some of those security questions. I didn't even think about that.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Yeah, it's absolutely true. And and a lot of, as we know, whatever you put on the internet, it's never it's it's if you can say it's deleted, but it's not deleted, it's there, right? So once you put it out there, it's out there, right? So if it's a a post and and everyone's like, oh, well, you know, we all grew up in this area, which street did you grow up on? Now they're just collecting information from everybody, right? So you don't want to put that information out there, skip those posts. Exactly. Skip those posts. That's a great point. Ignore them, keep scrolling, whatever it may be. Um, but any of those personal questions, you know, what street did you grow up on? What high school did you go to? You know, your mother's maiden name, anything like that.

SPEAKER_02 8:01

All right. If someone notices then suspicious activity or they notice an unauthorized charge, what should they do first? Can you just walk us through like the basic steps? Even if it's like after hours, I mean, what if it's the weekends?

SPEAKER_00 8:12

How does all that work? So you always want to if if you notice a transaction that whether it's you're trying to dispute the transaction or you feel like it's fraud, the best course of action is just call the number on the back of your card, right? Whether it's the weekend, midday, Monday, whatever it may be, call the number on the back of your card. Fraud departments will reach out to you if they notice transactions too, but that's a tough space because again, we don't want to look like the fraudster. Right, exactly. You don't make that call. Right. So it's it's a it's a tough place to be in, but we do want to protect you, right? So we may reach out to say, hey, we noticed this transaction, doesn't it? Looks like it's outside of your spending pattern, or you live in Delaware and this transaction was in Nebraska, right? Right. We're just trying to figure things out. If you're ever wary about those kinds of things, though, to say, all right, cool, I appreciate that. I'm gonna go to my branch, or I'm gonna give them a call. And we're never gonna dispute that. If someone ever disputes that, they're probably a fraudster. Right? That's one way to look at it too. Yeah, absolutely. Because we're not gonna say, well, no, stay on the phone with me. Let me let me let me take care of this. No, all right, cool. Give give us a call on the number at the number on the back of your card or visit visit your nearest branch, and you can get a squared away immediately. So that does make sense. Yeah, but we're never gonna dispute that.

SPEAKER_02 9:23

Yeah, all really great information to have. Um, you want to talk about mass compromises then? Because you hear about them. So let's kind of dive a little bit more into what exactly that means and how a customer would react if their information was involved.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Yeah, so a lot of major retailers, Amazon, Walmart's targets, those kinds of retailers, obviously they have millions and millions of transactions, and sometimes their data is breached by a fraud store, black market, whatever it may be. And we'll be notified. We're a MasterCard house. We'll get notified by them and say, hey, this well, a lot of times they don't say that who the merchant is. Sometimes they do. That's where a lot of customers want to know, well, who where did I get breached? Right. Sometimes we don't have that information. We can't answer that. Oh, they don't necessarily provide it to you. Right, because we're getting notified by MasterCard, not by the retailer. Gotcha. Right. Okay. So they say there was a there was a breach, it impacted however many cards. A lot of times, mass is a bunch of cards, a thousand cards, fifty thousand cards, whatever it may be, depending on the size of the merchant or the retailer. But when that happens, we take uh take action, and a lot of times we'll either replace the card or send like a letter to say, hey, we had this breach, we want to replace the card. If it's something minor, a lot of times you don't have to replace the card. But if we reach out with that suggestion, that's that's the best course of action. Sometimes we'll just send out a card and that that letter will be attached to the card to say, hey, here's your new card. We there was a breach, just activate this card and this will be your car going forward. Okay. That's that's kind of how it goes. Honestly, nothing you can do about that, right? There's nothing we can do about it, there's nothing the consumer can do about it. If the if the retailer's breached, it's just, you know, we want to be proactive and trying to get you a new car so you you you're not impacted.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

Right. It doesn't necessarily mean that any of their money's gone, right? It's more so their information.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

Absolutely. The information is out there and there's a possibility that they could use the card.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

Right, exactly. That's really what it is. So you take that proactive step to say, hey, let's stop it now, get them a new card, if that's the case. And that way, then people that have the information or the you know that in that compromise, that's not gonna work anymore anyway. Absolutely. Because the card's you know deactivated.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Absolutely. Okay. And and the people may feel like, oh, do I need to get a whole new account? Do I need to just shut this down? And no, it's it's just the card, right? In most cases. Sometimes if you some some some retailers have like um ACH information on file, which is like your check and account information, things like that. But again, whatever notification we get will make sure that you're aware and what we what we need to change will change. But most of the time it's just car compromises.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

So that leads us, I guess, also into the topic of identity theft, because right now that your information's out there, those two probably work hand in hand. Absolutely. Um, so let's talk about options, I guess, for protection, because it's one of the scariest situations people can face. Identity theft. Um so if somebody believes that their identity, identity has been compromised, then like what options do they have? Or what do they do?

SPEAKER_00 12:08

If your identity has been compromised, you want to contact your credit bureaus just to get some credit locks and things like that on there. There are protective applications like LifeLock and things like that that'll that you can purchase and and subscribe to to try to prevent those things. They'll lock your credit, they'll do monitoring and things like that, which are all good options. There's hundreds of them out there. Just would you should do the research and see what works best for you. Whether it's you know price-wise or or option-wise. If though you are impacted by identity theft, that can impact everything, right? Because that that can that can drain your entire life, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

If you're impacted by identity theft, first things first is get those locks on, right? Contact your credit bureaus, get those locks on, try to get all of that stuff squared away. You want to do that before you try to change any financial information. Because if you if that stuff still is still unlocked and your information's out there, you change it, that information just goes with it, right? Okay. So you want to do you want to do the blocking up of your credit and and all your information first.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

Gotcha. That's a great thing to know.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

This is good stuff. All right, so behind the scenes then, what is Dover Federal doing to detect fraud early and then respond quickly when something does happen?

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Yeah, we again we have numerous systems, right, that that detect fraud. We have we actually have a system that we implemented three or four months ago. Obviously, not going to get into the details of that, but our systems are um up to par and up to date. But things that you can kind of look for are fraud alert texts. We do send texts out. Again, we may call depending on the circumstance, so they see something suspicious. But a lot of times we'll send out a text alert or the text will say, you know, we see this transaction at such and such uh retailer. It's for this amount. If it looks familiar to you, yes. If it doesn't, you know, it might be why for yes or n for no or what have you. But it's okay to reply to those texts. If once it starts to get into detail, you know, you reply, no, that wasn't me, and then they come back with another text, like, oh well, what about this transaction? Or maybe you should call us or let us call you, or we'll give us your password so that we can try to mitigate this. Stop it right there. Yeah, yeah. You you got my yes or my no, and that's kind of it, right? So once it gets into that, then you just call your financial financial institution and just say, Hey, I got this text, or is this you guys? There are fake texts out there, so they'll let you know, like, no, that wasn't us, or we don't do that, or what have you. Right. But you know, once you call you, at least you know, right? But uh, as far as the other things that we're doing, we we monitor 24-7. Again, uh, we have state-of-the-art technology, and we're we're making sure that all of our members are all covered on all bases at all times. I think that we touched on before was the travel notifications. That's super important because again, we don't want to block you when you're actually traveling, but at the same time, we want to make sure that it's you. So that's super important. Just let us know when you're when you're going out of out of out of town, it's fine, but out of the country is a definite. Yeah. Again, we have car controls, we can block the cards if we see anything suspicious, anything like that, get new cards out when there's mass compromises and things like that. That's just part of what we do. Yeah, we also have a security center on our website at DoverFCU.com where you can get updates and and stay up to date with uh current trends and and information. And we do also offer financial seminars from time to time.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

Awesome. So just touching on that security center again, though, they can find that at DoverFCU.com and a great resource, I'm sure, then to keep up with information on trends, protection, and great, just great resources.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

It's great, it's great information so that you know how to keep yourself protected.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Absolutely. So check out that security center at DoverfCU.com. Um, education and training, though, because it seems to be a big part of your approach too. And it's just so good. I love this conversation because I'm learning a lot. But it's really good information to get out um to the public, not just for your members, but probably your employees too, right? To make sure that everybody knows um, you know, the steps that you're taking and just things to watch out for. Let's talk about why that ongoing training then is so important to fight against fraud. Probably changes all the time.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah. Our team is up to date, right? So they're always doing research and and gaining different education on popular fraud trends and things like that. During our annual meeting every year, we have like our fraud table set up. There's different, you know, different departments have different sections of the table set up, but we do it at our annual meeting, so our members can come and get education directly from the fraud team, things like that. So, you know, again, there's there's ways to to be aware.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Right, exactly. Well, and this conversation is helping. Yeah, it really is. So before we let you go, what is one takeaway you'd want uh anyone listening right now to remember when it comes to protecting themselves from fraud? Your big takeaway.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

My biggest takeaway is be careful of scams. Yeah. Scams are it's just a very huge topic, right? Scams are everywhere, and that there's so many different types. That's just the biggest takeaway. So be careful of those scams. That's huge.

SPEAKER_02 17:07

Absolutely. All right, great information today. Yes, this is good stuff. West Congo, the cards and fraud manager at Dover Federal Credit Union. So thank you so much for sharing this important information and helping keeping your members, our listeners in the community stay informed and protected. So I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Thank you. Thank you for having me.