Telephone scam targets IH Mississippi Valley customers

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By Jennifer DeWitt | Thursday, June 05, 2008 |

IH Mississippi Valley Credit Union warned Tuesday that a telephone scam in the Quad-City area is attempting to solicit financial information from its credit union members as well as non-customers.

Laura Ernzen, the credit union’s vice president of marketing, said people began receiving automated telephone messages late afternoon and early evening Monday indicating there had been suspected fraudulent activity on their IH Mississippi Valley account. The recorded message instructed recipients to call a telephone number where credit/debit card information was requested.

“This is a scam,” Ernzen said. “If you had called it, you would have been asked for your credit card number, debit card number, PIN and expiration.”

She said IH Mississippi Valley Credit Union does not initiate any e-mail, telephone call or direct mail messages that request confidential information such as credit card or personal identification numbers. “A real institution will ask the right questions, they will not ask for your financial information. They already have it,” she said.

Early Tuesday, authorities shut down the 800 number connected to the scam, she said.

Ernzen said the credit union does not know how many people received scam calls, but representatives were aware that people who are not members were contacted. “It works like an e-mail scam; they are blanketing a geographic region,” she said.

“The red flag for any fraud should be if you are asked for your credit card, debit card, PIN number or account number. Those four things you should be most suspicious of if anybody ask for that information.”

Ernzen added that the credit union deals with fraud reports on a daily basis. Due to the frequency, the credit union has added a Fraud Protection section to its Web site, ihmvcu.org.

“The phishing scam, e-mail scams and phone scams are common and there will continue to be variations of those occurring,” Ernzen said. “The basic attempt is always to get an individual to part with their secure financial information.”

She cautioned that anyone who received the automated phone message should not respond to it. People who had responded should immediately call the credit union at (309) 793-6200 for fraud protection services.

IH Mississippi serves 85,000 members across the Quad-City area.

Jennifer DeWitt can be contacted at (563) 383-2318 or jdewitt@qctimes.com.