Dutch authorities arrested two individuals for running a new type of bank helpdesk fraud scheme that caused over $400,000 in damages.
As part of the scheme, the suspects called potential victims and played AI-generated audio segments that claimed there had been suspicious activity in the recipient’s bank account.
The audio recordings impersonated various banks, companies, and scenarios, asked victims to press ‘1’ if they were not responsible for the alleged suspicious activity, and then put them on hold.
Next, a suspect impersonating a bank employee took over the call, claiming the victim’s debit card had been blocked and asking the recipient to download an application and scan the card by holding it against the phone.
This resulted in the application extracting the data from the card’s NFC chip that supported contactless payments. The information was then sent to a miscreant who had the application ready and was waiting at an ATM to withdraw money from the victim’s account.
Using the scheme, the suspects looted over €380,000 (~$425,600) from the bank accounts of 170 victims of all ages, the Dutch police say.
The two suspects, a 23-year-old from Vaassen and a 25-year-old man from Ede, were arrested on October 6. The former likely built the infrastructure behind the scheme and orchestrated the attacks, while the latter played a coordinating role.
Investigators also took the fraudsters’ servers offline and seized them, along with their phones and laptops. Both remain in custody pending investigation.
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