On the morning of Sunday, January 18, 2009, many members of two
Saskatchewan credit unions were flooded with scam calls from fraudsters
posing as Master Card security representatives.
The calls, which attempted to steal credit card numbers and
personal information, began at 10:30 am and ended by noon. Within
90 minutes the majority of members belonging to the two credit unions
had been contacted by the scam artists.
The fraudsters, posing as credit union representatives claimed
"Your (the CU name) Credit Union MasterCard has become
compromised and needs to be replaced immediately. Please provide
your card number and CVC2 (the 3 digit security number on the back of a
credit card) so we can proceed with replacing your card.
The fraudsters also asked for personal information such as Date of
Birth and SIN.
Some of the area codes the calls originated from were:
214-231-5439 (Texas), 678-805-0458 (Georgia), 888-291-7574 (unknown).
The scam is a slight variation of the MasterCard/Visa scam which
Celero experienced in December 2008.
If you have any questions about the above scam, please contact
your credit union branch.