BEAVER, Penn. -
"I've seen stuff here that would knock your socks off," said Bill Gandjos, direction of collections/assistant manager of WEST-AIRCOMM Federal Credit Union.
The recent scam at WEST-AIRCOMM FCU was caught earlier this month when a new member came in to make a deposit.
"She came in to open an account as a new member," Gandjos said. "She had a small paycheck with her, which was legitimate."
However, the other check she wanted to deposit didn't seem right to the teller, Gandjos said. It was a $2,700 cashier's check with the CU Service Centers logo. The teller was suspicious so she enlisted the help of her manager, Joyce Jumper.
When Jumper asked the customer about the check, "she whips out this letter," Gandjos said. The letter was from Secret Shoppers of Vancouver, B.C., informing her that she had been selected to become one of Secret Shoppers' representatives. She received the letter with the check, along with her first assignment.
Her First Assignment
Her first assignment, according to the letter, was to "pose as a customer sending a Money Gram payment to Nicole Brown, a relative of yours in Timmins, Ontario, Canada. The fund needed to complete this transaction assignment has been arranged and has been enclosed with this letter."
The letter continued by breaking down the $2,700 to: two hours of pay at $150 each totaling $300, a Money Gram service charge of $55, and the funds to be sent to "Nicole Brown"-$2,345.
The member was to deposit the check, keep the $300 for her work, and send $2,345 to "Nicole Brown."
The bottom of the letter had color logos from Pizza Hut, Money Gram International, McDonald's, Budget, Blockbuster, Sears, Wendy's, Wal-Mart and Starbucks Coffee.
"This [scam] is slick," Gandjos said. "This one is really sharp. The best part is the in-color official logos. This one was good. They are getting more and more sophisticated. This was the best one."
WEST-AIRCOMM FCU rarely lets one of these scams get by them, Gandjos said.
"We ask a lot of questions," he said. "We ask 'Where did the check come from? Who gave it to you?' It ticks off a member sometimes, but we tell them we are doing it for their protection."
Ask Early And Often
Unfortunately, these questions have to be asked often, Gandjos said.
"Within the past two weeks, we've had three fraudulent checks," he said. When suspicious, "we check the routing numbers right away."
"The stuff never ends," he said.
For that reason, WEST-AIRCOMM FCU conducts numerous teller-training sessions throughout its three Pennsylvania branches. Also, whenever they hear of a scam, warnings are immediately sent to the branches.
"You just have to be aggressive," Gandjos said. "We also put them in our quarterly newsletter."
The credit union lobby is also home to an FBI poster about scams. Gandjos also checks the CUNA website often, and pulls the latest scams posted by CUNA and passes them to the tellers.
Gandjos said that many members appreciate the warnings and cautiousness of the tellers. And about the members who try to make these types of deposits he said that most of them "know it's not right."
"And if the stuff comes back, they claim ignorance," he said. "Greed breeds stupidity. I'm just amazed at how gullible people are. And they prey on people with economic problems."
Gandjos said he hopes that other credit unions are as aggressive as WEST-AIRCOMM FCU, especially because he expects the problem to only get worse.
"The Internet is the greatest thing," he said. "As more people get hooked up online, there will be even more. They will never stop. It will never end."
For other credit unions facing this issue of fraud, Gandjos offered the following advice:
"Every credit union has got to make time," he said. "It's all about training, training, training. We do training every month. And we review everything. We have monthly meetings for the tellers, and it's mandatory for them to attend."
WEST-AIRCOMM FCU has more than 17,000 members, and its assets are about $133 million.
