Mobile phone scam drains bank accounts of Bowen resident

The police have issued a warning for this telco scam

A Bowen resident has been scammed from a SIM card swapping scam

A BOWEN resident has been the victim of a mobile porting scam that has left all three of their accounts empty.

Senior Constable Steve Smith said a Bowen resident went to turn on their mobile phone on Thursday, May 28, to find it wasn’t connected to a mobile network and was displaying SOS only.

He said the resident could not determine a cause for the mobile phone issue.

The resident then went to a local service station and after refuelling their vehicle found out there was insufficient funds to pay for the purchase, which could not be explained.

After the resident inquired with their financial institution, the resident made the shocking find that all three accounts that belonged to them had been drained of all funds.

Snr Const Smith said further inquiries with the residents’ telco provider found they had been the victim of a ‘mobile porting’ or ‘SIM-swapping scam’.

“Basically it’s something we have all done lawfully, so when you swap to telco A from telco B, you would have them port your mobile number across to a new SIM card,” he said.

“What these people do is gather the identifying information and go to the telco to have the number ported across to a sim they would have with them.

“This now means that all of the information you carry with your phone, including things like two-part authentication where you would get a message sent to your phone number to verify it’s you, will be carried to the sim and number they have.

“They’ll log on to a banking app and if it uses the mobile number as part of it, well they have that now and can gain access to those accounts.”

Snr Const Smith said there were steps a mobile phone owner can take to protect themselves from this illegal activity and directed people to idcare.org/.

He said ID CARE was an organisation designed to assist victims of identity crime with regaining control of their identity and preventing the loss of that information.

Originally published as