Our next story is one that anyone who pays bills through online banking will want to pay close attention to.
It's about a phishing scam currently targeting online customers at three of Belize's major banks, one that's left dozens of people with empty accounts after they made one tiny mistake.
I took a look at this new-fangled cyber crime today and here's what I found out.
Imagine receiving this notice in your email. It appears to come from your bank and looks like a confirmation of a bill paid that also asks whether you made said transaction. It then asks that those who did not in fact make the transaction click here.
The sending email address and the link almost look legit because they bear the name of the bank.
But it's a scam and that simple click could be the most painful one you ever make and tonight we can report that customers from several of Belize's major banks have lost thousands of dollars to that one simple click.
It's the kind of scam that the FIU has been warning Belizean about since 2020, the only difference this time is that the money doesn't seem to be disappearing into Nigerian or Eastern European banks.
Instead it's circulating right here at home because this scam seems to be local.
Kent Clare, Director, F.I.U.
"Most of the originators seemed to be from outside of Belize and they were asking people to take the proceeds and it's confines and remit them outside, no and it seems now that the criminals are indeed homegrown and so we are working furiously with some of the other banks where the proceeds would have been deposited in to try and identify the persons into whose accounts those monies went into and to try and get a sense from them as to how they were approached to get this done. So, investigative staff and analysts are working with the banks to try and tie up all of these."
And his afternoon we got a chance ask one bank's risk manager about this latest scam.
Phillipa Duncan, Chief Risk Officer, Heritage Bank
"For this particular one, no but phishing scams come in all different shapes and forms, we encountered it widespread about a couple years ago in 2020 thereabouts, and since then the banks and the FIU have put out public notices and warnings about these phishing scams."
Cherisse Halsall:
"So in this particular case we've been told that customers who have lost money that's the norm."
And with no assurance of a return payment Belizean will have to be extra vigilant about not falling prey to these scams on any end of the spectrum whether you have money stolen or see surprise funds just show up in your account.
Kent Claire, F.I.U,
"We want to indicate right that in the past when we have investigated certain people into whose account the money was being put and we gave them warnings and they promised to pay back and stuff like that, we said to them the next time this thing happens we are not going to be treating it like that we are going to prosecute you because people need to get the sense. If money comes into your account and you didn't put it there it has to, you have to operate with the mindset that this might likely be the proceeds of crime and we can't just continue to tell people and warn people. There are people who are losing their livelihoods out here so we are sending a warning. The persons that we interview and we can determine that they had reason to know that these were the proceeds of crime, we are gonna charge them."
Clare says the FIU will put particular emphasis on finding out how the scammers retrieved the funds even when they were put into the accounts of regular customers. They believe these customers receive some enticement to hand some portion of the funds over to the guilty parties.
We'll keep following this story. And if you feel you have been caught in this scam, we want to hear your story- send us a WhatsApp message through the number on our Facebook page.
