Danielle McCarthy

Technology

Scammers can now cut off your mobile phone and drain your bank account in just minutes

Scammers can now cut off your mobile phone and drain your bank account in just minutes

A new scam targeting Australians is seeing fraudsters exploiting mobile phone network providers so that they drain a victim’s bank account.

Fraudsters will port the victim’s mobile phone number to a new sim card, which is owned by the scammer, so that they can then use the mobile number as a form of identification to transfer money.

A victim of this scam, Lisa Johnson, told 9News that it all started when she received a phone call where the caller immediately hung up.

Later that night, Lisa received a text from Optus saying a request had been made to port her number, followed 30 seconds later by a confirmation text from Vodafone, confirming the task had been completed.

When she called Optus, her service was not active and then, 15 minutes later, she received a notification that $1000 had been withdrawn from her account.

Porting a number only requires details such as a name, address, date of birth and bank account numbers. Scammers can obtain this information from stealing mail or hacking methods.

Network providers are required by law to fulfil a request to port a mobile phone number to a new carrier within three hours.

Detective Chief Inspector Matt Craft told 9News that the scam had cost Australians $10 million in the last year. He said the timeframe for number ports to complete should be extended.

“There needs to be time for a customer to respond and respond appropriately,” he said.  

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