Thursday followingnoon, Alice receives a phone call from a person who introduces herself as an employee of her BNP Paribas Fortis bank branch. “It was a very dignified and friendly voice that told me that a suspicious transaction had been detected”, explains Alice to our colleagues from the Nieuwsblad.
The fake bank employee then asks the 50-year-old to review her latest transactions and asks her if she has recently cashed an amount of 1800 euros, to which Alice replies that this was not the case. Directly, her interlocutor tells her that it is surely a scam and that she will help her false client to recover this money. “She told me that I had to go to the bank the next day and that they would sort things out, but to help me even faster, she would immediately send an employee to cut the card,” explains the elderly lady.
Neither one nor two, Alice’s doorbell rang. A young man then appears, computer in hand. While talking with Alice, the latter asks her to insert her card into a reader, type in her code and then cut the bank card in half. “I had no idea I had been scammed. When my daughter came by a little later and I told her everything, she immediately said “Oh no, they ripped you off”.
Alice’s daughter then calls her bank directly to warn them, but the latter had already noticed suspicious movements and had already blocked the card. Unfortunately, the scammers had already been able to take €600 from an ATM in Diepenbeek and then €1,200 from an ATM in Hasselt. Finally, the thieves spent several thousand euros in an appliance store. “In total I lost 4,000 euros,” sighs Alice. “I was gullible…”.
An investigation is carried out by the bank and the police in order to find the perpetrators.