Two years ago  I told you about a scam where scammers lured people into providing their bank account number and bank’s routing number to the scammer under the pretense of needing the information in order to send you a reward for finding a stolen car that, in fact, had not been stolen.  In that scam, the scammers posted a photograph of their car on social media indicating it had been stolen and asked people who saw the car to report it to the phony car theft victim and claim a reward.  A bank routing number is the number used by your bank for wiring funds.

While it may not seem like your bank account number and the routing number of your bank would be very important information to protect, armed with this information a scammer can steal your money in a variety of ways.  They can use that information to purchase goods online.  They can set up recurring payments, such as for utilities.  They can create counterfeit checks to access your bank account and make checks payable to themselves.

While some scammers trick people into providing their bank account number and bank’s routing number as was done in the Scam of the day for May 9, 2023, they also may get this information from stealing your checks.

TIPS

In order to protect your checks from being stolen, you should not mail checks and put the letters in your home mailbox.  Scammers scout neighborhoods looking for mailboxes with the red flag up indicating that there is outgoing mail and then steal it.  You can’t even trust mailing checks in the blue U.S. Postal Service mailboxes because, as I have written in the past, those mailboxes are broken into and mail stolen from them by scammers.   If you must mail checks, do so at the Post Office.

If you do become a victim of this type of scam, freeze your account immediately and notify the police and the fraud department of your bank.  Change your online banking password and make sure you are using dual factor authentication.  Fortunately, if you notify your bank within sixty days of receiving your monthly statement indicating that your bank account has been accessed you are not liable for the money taken from your account.

If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and type in your email address on the tab that states “Sign up for this blog.”