Text message scam

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - Thieves have found a way to use text messages to steal money.

When Dave Elberson was interrupted at his Snyder wood working business by an urgent message warning him his JP Morgan bank account had been frozen, he smelled the scam out right away.

"And I called it and it said, please punch in your debit card and go ahead from there. Right away, as soon as it said that, I did not do anything. Also, I don't have a JP Morgan debit card," said Elberson.

Scam messages have been around for years.

They're known as phishing attacks, crooks posing as a bank, credit card company or credit union, trying to steal someone's identity.

But phishing by text message is new and now credit unions are being used as bait.

Pat Edinger, the Manager of the Buffalo Metropolitan Credit Union said they were flooded by questions from many non-members about their accounts being frozen.

"To try to get as many people as they can and hopefully they will have some out of those thousands and thousands of numbers they send to, to respond to it. All they need is one or two," explained Edinger.

Also the result of text messages.

Pat explained that this kind of text message scam is called "SMishing", a phishing attack aimed at stealing your ID by your cell phone's Short Message Service, SMS or yet another new term for your consumer fraud vocabulary.

Linda Bowen from the BCT Federal Credit Union said, "As soon as they called that number, it was immediate. It's almost like they were at an ATM machine waiting to hit it."

SMishing involves thousands of messages or more, sent from an auto dialer.

Credit union officials said they alerted the Secret Service and the cell phone carrier and tracked down the SMishing scam to someplace in Vietnam.