The Commonwealth Bank and Australia’s ACCC competition watchdog are warning consumers to disregard unsolicited phone calls purporting to be from the bank.
Over the past few days, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says it has received reports of scam phone calls asking for residents by name, then pretending to be a representative of the bank soliciting account information in order to ”refund overcharged fees” or other amounts.
ACCC deputy chair Delia Rickard told Fairfax Media one sophisticated variation of the scam involves an automated call asking for a person by name then telling them to expect a call from the ”Department of Fair Trading” the next day for a refund to be processed.
The second caller then requests bank account or credit card details to debit a ”processing fee” and to refund money. The caller doesn’t explain why the “bank” does not already know these details of these accounts.
