WINDHOEK - FirstRand Namibia has again warned customers and the general public that the imposter fraud continues unabated. Ingrid Kahona-Katjiukua, FNB Namibia Forensics advises that this type of fraud, where someone pretends to be from FNB Namibia, is ongoing and currently the bank receives a lot of requests and queries from customers pertaining to this.
“While many of our customers are vigilant, unfortunately there are always those who fall prey to this fraud and we wish to warn everyone to be on high alert when receiving a phone call from someone claiming to be from FNB and requesting them to perform an action on their cellphone (banking device) and or to provide confidential banking details over the phone, as this will lead to loss of their hard earned money.
She continued that the fraudsters call people at random and pose as FNB employees enquiring about funds that need to be released for various reasons such as apparent dividend payments, policy pay-outs, rewards for long standing customers and or system upgrades have been used as ruses to receive money.
“The call, in most cases, is placed to a landline and the customer is then requested to enter a code on their cellphone (devices or provide banking details) for release of funds or provide confidential banking details.
Kahona-Katjiukua urges everyone to rather take the caller’s details and phone the bank through their switchboard number to confirm that this is not a scam. She added that one should never provide any passwords, card numbers, card expiry dates and or the number at back of card over the phone and
never adhere to an over phone instruction to visit an ATM with your ATM card, for any system update.
“Please remember that we will never call a customer or a member of the public to release funds for dividends, policy pay-outs (system upgrades) or for any form of receiving or sending money. FNB Namibia does not require any ‘codes’ from a customer to release funds; nor have them to go through any steps on the cellphone (banking devices),” Kahona-Katjiukua cautioned.