My mom in Escondido CA received a telemarketing call from a group calling themselves First Protection Aid. They were selling a medical insurance product which she said she did not want. During the course of the call the marketer extracted bank information from my mom using the "verification of information" trick - he convinced her that she had already signed up for the service and he needed the info to cancel it.
Several days later a direct debit was charged to her bank account for $377. This took the form of an electronic check payable to First Protection Aid with complete magnetic bank routing and account number information and a "guaranteed payment" endorsement in place of her signature. The only clues that the check was fraudulent were that (a) her street address was misspelled (meaining that the information was gained over the phone and not from a physical check) and (b) the "check number" was completely out of sequence with her current check stock. Otherwise it looked good and the bank passed it.
I found all this by pulling a copy of the "check" from online bank records for my mom's account.in addition the copy contained a telephone number: 888-430-2780. It also contained deposit instructions to MBank account #50506524 for the account of First Protection.
I called the 888 number and spoke to a person named "Mark" who had a very heavy Indian or Middle Eastern accent. I asked what the charge was for and he said that my mom had purchased an "insurance product". When I asked what the product was, he said that he only handled marketing and that the product was provided "by the company". He refused to give any other verifying information and said he "would look into" why my mom had been charged, what she had been charged for and why no documentation had ever been sent to her. I of course don't expect to hear back from "Mark".
After further online research I found that the same company has been the subject of multiple complaints of direct, unauthorized charges for "insurance products" to accounts in California - always in the amount of $377 - starting in May. The company also has complaints against it for earlier, similar direct charges involving "telemarketing protection" (Montana 2009) and "computer firewall" services using the name First Protection Aid. So, these guys have been around for some years - but they do like the amount $377.
The number 888-430-2780 was last associated with a company called BB&A Properties VIII which offers rental properties and is based in Spokane Valley, WA (source: YellowPages.com reverse number search). While there is no obvious link between this company and First Protection Aid (and therefore no automatic presumption of involvement), that is the last available information for this number. There are several entities using the name MBank, but only one US entity was found and that bank is based in Gresham, OR, a suburb of Portland, OR. I did find the geographic proximity of the two locations (business and bank) to be interesting.
We are in the process of attempting to recover her funds on the basis of fraud and have taken other protective measures to ensure that this does not happen again.
This is a very slick scam designed to fool the elderly into either accepting a product that they do not want or, even if they state clearly that they do not want the product, to extract information from the victim sufficient to access their bank accounts. The goal is ALWAYS to get the bank information. The charges will NOT show up as Automated Clearing House (ACH) debits, which are easily identifiable. They will instead show up as REGULAR CHECKS, identifiable only by the fact that they will be out of sequence from existing check books currently in use.
The only defense is to counsel your loved ones to NEVER give out banking or personal information to anyone they do not know. As we all know, that's easier said than done. I hope that this report helps to put this particular outfit out of the game, at least using this particular scam.
0 comments