'Smelt a rat': Scammer scare for former mayor prompts warning

Bill Woods. Photo: Star News
Bill Woods. Photo: Star News
Bill Woods is warning people not to engage with unsolicited callers after being scammed out of $6000.

A scammer gained access to his online banking details on two separate occasions over the last month. Luckily, the second time Woods was clued up and prevented his bank accounts being emptied out.

Woods took the first call from the scammer on his cellphone, ostensibly from the Bank of Toronto, via WhatsApp. The caller said he was representing the bank and acting for a shareholding company, wanting to return $15,000 from a previous investment Woods made about 10 years ago.

It was money Woods had previously written off, but the caller was convincing.

Over the next four hours, the man kept phoning Woods, to get a little more information each time about Woods’ Westpac bank account, into which he was wanting to deposit the $15,000.

Woods did not give out his password or pin number, but gave his driver licence number and other online security details such as his mother’s maiden name.

“That was enough for them to convince the bank,” said Woods, who was mayor of the Selwyn district from 1992 to 1995.

The caller was able to access Woods’ personal information held by Westpac, and change the contact cellphone number. This meant that when the bank sent security text messages, they went to the scammer and not to Woods.

Woods was later alarmed to see about $6000 missing from his bank accounts. However, he got this back within 72 hours after immediately contacting Westpac.

He said the scammer tried again about three weeks later. This time it was a man saying he was from Westpac. He said he could see there had been two suspicious withdrawals from Woods’ bank accounts. He was able to tell

Woods the balances of the accounts.

“That made me start to think – how would anybody know how much was in all of my accounts? So it sounded pretty convincing,” Woods said.

Once again the scammer was able to get enough security information from Woods to change his cellphone number on the bank’s records.

However, this time Woods told the caller he had to go and would phone him back. He instead directly phoned his bank, which was able to tell him about the scamming activity under way on his accounts.

Woods said he suspected both calls were from the same scamming organisation, as the second caller had information apparently gleaned from the first scamming incident.

“They both spoke very good English, with a hint of an accent,” Woods said.

“My advice to people, if they get an inquiry by telephone, hang up or tell them to email you with the paper work, so it can be verified. For a bank deposit, all you need to say is your bank account number,” he said.

“If I hadn’t of smelt a rat, I could have had my bank accounts cleaned out.”

Former computer technician Jason Barnes checked out Woods’ personal computer and cellphone.

He cleaned it of “potential unwanted programmes”, or PUPs, which may have had potential to yield banking information to scammers.

However, he suspected the scammer had mostly benefited from being able to get Woods’ trust on the phone.

“In Bill’s case it was more of a verbal con,” Barnes said.

“They will take people for multiple rides if they can. They gain your confidence, they confuse people with the technology.”

He believed the call was most likely made from a professional scamming call centre overseas.

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