Phones are still a popular way scammers are reaching us. In fact, their methods are evolving. More than 200 residents have become prey to scam this year.
Scammers impersonate banks and promise to provide low-interest loans. They then send a malicious code that replaces banking apps with fake ones that intercept calls allowing victims to access your bank. Todd Thacker reports.

Report


This is a street in (외도동) Oedo-dong, Jeju City.
A middle-aged woman and a young man stand near a phone booth.



The woman and the man talk on a cellphone by turns. Then the woman takes a bundle of cash out of her bag and passes it to the man.
What we’re witnessing is a phone scammer at work, a scheme that will result in the loss of tens of million won.

A man enters a local bank.


He withdraws 20 million won and hands it over to phone scammers.
He was tricked into believing that the scammers would switch his loan to a cheaper one under a government lending program.


In his haste to make the deal, the man borrowed money from relatives and friends. Ultimately he realized it was a scam, but it was too late. Not long after, he lost his job.


Several suspects who acted as money collectors in the phone scam have been arrested over the last few days.


Between mid-April and early May, seven victims lost a total of 130 million won.


The scammers impersonate bank officials by telephone or text and provide fake information on low-interest government lending programs.


They send malicious code to victims that is similar in appearance to a banking app. The code replaces an already installed banking app with a fake one, enabling scammers to intercept calls from a victim to a bank or a Financial Supervisory Service.

2,200 cases of phone-based scams have been reported over the last five years in Jeju.
Already this year some 218 cases have racked up 4.5 billion won in damages.


As a police investigation continues, two scammers find themselves behind bars, and their accomplices are on the run.

Todd Thacker, KCTV