Wire Fraud Update — They Are Getting Bold … Explosion of Attempts

If you, your family, children, or any other email you control does not have a password with at least one symbol (preferably two), large, and small capital letter, PLEASE go change it right now …….. We will wait …… Still waiting ………

THANK YOU THAT WAS NOT THAT BAD, WAS IT??

In completing this article I went to ALL of my personal, junk, duplicate, and kids emails and upped the strength of the passwords, including Google+ and others. While it took more than a minute or two, given our recent findings (to follow) ….  well worth it!

Wire Fraud Update

Casually from our personal experiences over the last year we mentioned here in a post and here in our latest newsletter that Wire Fraud is on the increase. Little did we know it is not increasing it is exploding.

Take note, here are examples of what these crooks are doing:

• Masking your home number while calling from their line on a static sounding line (to hide their voice) and asking for money (How Bold Can you Get?  Check the next one out!)
• Complete identity theft of a person, opening a bank account in their name and asking their contact to wire the money to the new “like titled” account (This is VERY scary)
• Emailing for money, and having a phone number that has a voice message that they instruct to call, later sending an email that they are in a meeting and need the money quickly
• Saying they just saw your contact at an event (church etc..) and they needed to suddenly send money to a new source

All About the Password

Ok, so you may ask how can they do this? Our lives read in print, well email these days, and with open access to your email, and history, a crook can become you with a few hours (maybe minutes) of review.

If you did not change your password in the beginning of this post, and it is not strong, please do so now…it all starts there!

Please do not take a chance, we are all in this together, and while better than the muzzle of a gun in our face (Bonnie and Clyde) the theft is still unwarranted.

We are on notice and have been for some time. Please excuse our overly cautious answers to wire question from now on….it is for our collective safety.

John Kvale CFA, CFP

PS This was not meant to develop fear or paranoia, only to inform every one of the seriousness of what we are dealing with.