Just doing our jobs: Saving a customer from fraud

Fraudsters are forever finding new and more intimidating ways to take advantage of our customers who have worked so hard for their money. These bad actors can be so convincing, they can throw you off your game and have you making decisions you’d never ordinarily make. Thankfully, the people at UBT are committed to protecting our customers, and work together to safeguard their funds. Read on to learn how a UBT customer became caught up in a  fraudster’s web, and how our team, sensing something was off, worked together to safeguard our customer’s funds while building his trust so they could help him further. They ended up saving our customer from losing a great deal of money, and we met a fantastic new friend in the process.

Shifting out of panic mode

Recently, a UBT customer was led by a fraudster to believe that UBT was the bad guy, out to steal his money, and he was going to send it off to these very convincing fraudsters, who were offering to “save” him. He had had a message pop up on his computer, saying he’d been hacked, and after he clicked on something in that message, he immediately got a call from an unknown number. The caller said that the bank was trying to steal his money, and that he needed to wire the funds to them before we got to it. They (the scammers, pretending to be an agency that was helping him) said they were going to move his funds to investments in Hong Kong where they would be safe.

“The thing with the fraudsters is they like to make you panic. And when people panic, they’re rushed to do things they probably wouldn’t do normally,” said Nick Higgins, Assistant Branch Manager at UBT’s Center branch, who worked with this customer to sidestep the bad actors.

The scammers stayed on the phone with him while he visited first one branch, and then another, looking for a banker willing to wire his funds to Hong Kong with limited information. As he spent time at the second location, with two members of our Union Bank Place staff, he began to trust the team and question the sincerity of his new “friend” on the phone — he just needed time to pause and think more clearly, and thankfully our people were trained to spot a scam and knew just what to do.

Your money really does have people

Our grateful and generous customer returned with beautiful thank you flowers, and it’s safe to say that lasting friendships were formed that day. Nick Higgins, Elizabeth Wulf, and Blanca Valencia, who had assisted our customer that day, really appreciated the gifts, but they weren’t looking for accolades — they consider protecting our customers’ accounts to be a critical part of their jobs. They were just glad it worked out so well and that they were able to guide our customer on his next steps. While they know we can’t save everyone from fraud, our friendly Customer Service associates want our customers to know that they will do their level best to safeguard their funds, even if that means asking what may seem like too many questions, or politely declining a transaction.

“We’re going to do as much as we can to protect your money to make sure it’s safe,” said Elizabeth Wulf, Assistant Branch Manager at Union Bank Place. “And if we’re unsure, we’re going to ask additional questions. Sometimes it may seem like we’re prying in, but we’re just trying to figure out the best avenue to take… like our advertising says, your money has people — that’s true. And I think that’s what makes Union Bank, Union Bank.”

For more information on how to protect yourselves from fraud and scams, visit our Learning Center, where you can find lots of helpful resources on fraud prevention.