The Criminal Investigation Bureau on Monday warned people to be on their guard against online fraud after a woman complained of being defrauded of more than NT$1.5 million (US$51,177) while buying books online.
Online shopping has boomed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but people should be wary of people claiming to be a bank customer service staff, the bureau said in a press release on Monday.
After spending NT$310 on the online bookstore books.com.tw (博客來), the woman, surnamed Wu (吳), last week received a call from a person who claimed to be a customer service staff asking for her Line account to deal with an issue about the payment.
Photo: Yao Yueh-hung, Taipei Times
The caller — using the phone numbers +886-226590001 and +886-227263325 — told Wu the issue would be handled by the bank through Line.
A person claiming to be a bank teller then called to ask Wu to cancel her installment plan using an ATM or an online bank, saying it was a procedure required by the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC).
Wu then transferred 11 payments to the account provided by the person using an online bank and 45 payments using an ATM.
She only realized that she had been defrauded and reported the matter to the police when she lost contact with the caller after the payments were made successfully.
In another case, an engineer surnamed Ke (柯) received a call from a person who claimed to be a customer service representative of books.com.tw, saying that he had been charged NT$5,800 for a VIP membership instead of NT$600 for his order.
The person told Ke that the bank would ask him to cancel the wrong payment via online transfer.
Ke later received calls from six different numbers beginning with +165 and +886, with the callers claiming to be a bank or post office customer service staff.
Ke transferred three payments, totaling NT$850,000, according to the instructions provided by the callers using an online bank.
Statistics provided by the National Police Agency showed that from Jan. 1 to Wednesday last week, there were 198 cases of fraud related to canceling installment plans, with people losing NT$195.89 million in total, an increase of more than NT$55.76 million from a year earlier.
Fraud rings often pretend to be staff of well-known companies and ask customers to cancel installment plans using an app or ATM, citing FSC regulations, human error or computer errors as excuses, the bureau said.
People should watch out for numbers beginning with +2 or +886 and hang up the phone immediately when they hear the caller mention “canceling the set-up using an ATM,” “mistakenly scanning a barcode,” “misplacing an order,” “duplicated payment” and “unlocking the account using an ATM,” the bureau said.
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