Simonne Cumberbatch was getting ready for bed in her Toronto residence on Sept. 3 when she received a late-night phone call from what appeared to be her bank.
She looked down at her cell phone and saw the name “Scotiabank” appear on her caller ID.
“My bank number is coming up, and they’re asking for me by name,” Cumberbatch told CityNews.
“Then they start to talk about the fact that there has been a suspicious charge on my credit card.”
She had no reason to be doubtful that she was talking to a representative from her bank because, a few years back, she had received a similar call after taking an international trip.
“When I had returned from a trip to Mexico I got the exact same call. Someone had been trying to access my account and the bank quickly responded and closed the account,” she explained. “So I thought, ‘here we go again.’”
Cumberbatch says the caller had all her banking information, including her name, address, credit and debit card numbers.
“And they weren’t asking for it,” she said. “They had everything.”
While on the phone call, Cumberbatch asked for the representative’s name and used her computer to do some research.
She started with a simple Google search and was able to confirm that a person with that name did in fact work for Scotiabank. As she breathed a sigh of relief, she continued to look for more answers directly from the bank’s official website.
She typed questions into the search bar, like “does the fraud line call at night?” and “what is the bank’s fraud number?” and “does the bank call you about unusual, suspicious activity on your card outside of banking hours?”
According to information listed online, the Scotiabank fraud team is “available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.” Cumberbatch says the phone number listed on the bank’s official website also matched the one that appeared on her phone.
She was then told by the caller that she would be getting a two-factor alert on her cell phone and then confirmed with the caller that it was received.
“He never asked for a password. But he said, ‘Oh, I’m in here now. I’m freezing your account.’”
Unbeknownst to Cumberbatch, the caller wasn’t freezing her account at all. Instead, she says they were taking out money through a series of transactions and had even called the bank to increase her spending limits.
“The whole time I had no idea, because by this point, they had blocked me from accessing accounts to see this activity,” she explained.
Cumberbatch said the caller had made her an appointment with her primary branch the following afternoon.
“I decided I was not waiting until the afternoon. I went to my branch first thing in the morning to see what that was all about. That’s the first time anybody realized that my accounts had been emptied,” she said.
“They were pulling out money from multiple ATMs. They were going to dollar stores and buying like $3,000 worth of items. They were pouring via e-transfers out of the savings account in multiple different directions,” she added. “This was $41,000 taken out over four hours.”
The massive amounts of spending were unlike anything Cumberbatch has exhibited in nearly 20 years as a customer with the bank.
“I am very, very conservative with my money,” she explained. “Never in my history with this bank are there patterns of me going on a spending spree like this in a 4-hour period. I never touched my savings account and my withdrawal limits were set at $500.”
Cumberbatch says Scotiabank was sending alerts in real time, but to an old email address, not the one she says she had updated.
“I updated the address multiple times through Scotiabank in-person, but the alerts, despite my requests, were continuing to go to an address that I haven’t used in like 10 years.”
Cumberbatch immediately began working with Scotiabank’s fraud department, who, she says, has been anything but helpful and have so far refused to refund her money.
“Every conversation I’ve had with them has made me feel like Scotiobank’s fraud department is set out to make sure that the client takes liability, and they take no responsibility, even though they’re the ones with the automated system and the fraud protection,” she said.
Cumberbatch says the bank has a policy to look into the circumstances of a fraud alert within the hour after it’s sent, but claims that no one from the bank looked at her account until 10 hours later.
Scotiabank did not respond to a request for comment on that or to the many other claims made by Cumberbatch. A spokesperson says they do not comment publicly on individual cases.
“Scotiabank takes cases of fraud seriously and continues to educate clients to never share passwords, payment cards, PINs or account access with any individual,” the spokesperson said.
They then directed us to their website which warns customers about this specific bank impersonation scam, where fraudsters pose as bank employees to gain access to accounts. It’s a scam with a growing list of victims across Canada from multiple banks.
But so far, Cumberbatch says the bank has refused to answer specific questions about protocols they have to protect customers.
“I have asked them to respond to what does it take for an account to be frozen? Like, how was this keep happening with my method of spending? What are your anti-fraud protection protocols and strategies? And how did they miss this?” she asked. “I have received nothing.”
She says the consumer protection laws need to be strengthened to make banks more accountable and transparent when it comes to cases of fraud. And she’s not alone.
“I would love to see a change in the law, so consumers really do know what’s happened and why,” Vanessa Iafolla, an anti-fraud intelligence consultant, told CityNews. “As it stands now, it’s really up to us as individuals to mostly protect ourselves. This isn’t to say that financial institutions don’t care about security, but their first concern is their own security and sometimes that means that consumers are left on the hook.”
Options Consommateurs (OC), a non-profit Quebec-based organization that assists victims of bank fraud, also echoed those statements.
“When fraud occurs, banks put the onus on consumers to know the bank’s inner workings and that’s not fair to the consumer,” said Sylvie De Bellefeuille with OC.
Her organization has long been fighting for stronger consumer protection laws under the Bank Act, which would require banks, among other things, to be more transparent in their investigations of fraud.
“We need better protection for consumers as banks really put too much of a heavy burden on consumers’ shoulders and this needs to change,” she added.
That lack of transparency, Cumberbatch says, is the reason she decided to speak out.
“This was $41,000 taken out over four hours and I don’t know what could scream fraud more. Your automated anti-fraud is picking it up and nothing was done,” she quipped. “So, no, even if they did not return the money, we probably wouldn’t be here talking if they called, and we went over what happened, because then I could go, ‘okay, I see, I understand, things are going to improve.’”
“I don’t feel that way. Now I’m like, ‘Do I keep my money under a bed? Like, what is safe?’” she said.
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