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Every day, thousands of people fall victim to fraudulent emails, texts and calls from scammers pretending to be their bank. And in this time of expanded use of online and mobile banking, the problem is only growing worse. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission’s report on fraud estimates that American consumers lost a staggering $8.8 billion to phishing scams and other fraud in 2022—an increase of more than 65% over 2021.

We have seen recent situations where several businesses received an email from a vendor to change the way that they get paid. The email included a new account and routing numbers; however, this was a fraudster attempting to re-route the ACH payment. Verbal authentication of any payment change is highly suggested. Here is a great resource from NACHA with additional Fraud that is popular currently.

We have been made aware of customers receiving phone calls in which the caller claims to be from Community First Bank’s Fraud Department. CFB does have a Fraud Center that will contact you if there is potential fraud on your card, and we will never ask for specific personal or account information (including account numbers, names and passwords). 

“If someone sends you money and asks you to send it to someone else, STOP. You could be what some people call a money mule – someone scammers use to transfer and launder stolen money.”

We have been made aware of customers receiving automated phone calls in which the caller claims to be from Community First Bank to review accounts and talk about COVID assistance. These calls are fraudulent, and we have reported the scam to our local police department. Please note, we will never ask for specific account information over the phone (including numbers, names and passwords). If you have any questions or concerns, or feel you may have given out personal information to someone not associated with CFB, please call your local branch directly.

It has been reported that Verizon Wireless confirmed a data breach today. It has been stated that 6 million records have been compromised, the records were logs from residential customers who have called Verizon customer service in the past six months.

The Buckle Inc retail store announced Friday that they were hit with a data breach in their 450 stores within the United States. It was stated that malware was found on their cash registers between October 28, 2016 and April 14 2017.

Community First Bank recently got notification from Kmart stores regarding a data breach that involved their payment systems.  Kmart has not yet reported how many of their 735 stores were affected or the timeframe of the breach.