Revolut scam wave steals £180,000 from Jersey residents in just four weeks

If you live in Jersey and bank with Revolut, you should be on your guard against scam phone calls. Local police on the largest of the Channel Islands have warned that over a single four-week period, an astonishing 75% of all scam crime reports they have received have involved Revolut accounts. In all, victims have lost around £180,000 (over US $240,000) - a striking figure for such a short period of time, in such a small community, involving just one particular digital bank. According to Jersey's police force, most of the reported incidents have seen a victim receive an unexpected phone call from someone claiming to work for a bank (either in their fraud or security department, or Revolut's customer support team.) The caller claims that a suspicious transaction has been spotted on the account, or that it is at risk of being compromised. Victims are then persuaded into handing over sensitive security details, transferring their funds, approving transactions or simply granting the fraudster unfettered access to their accounts. Police say they have also handled several cases where Revolut accounts were compromised that did not involve any phone calls. It is possible that Jersey’s residents have been targeted by the fraudsters because it is one of the world’s best-known offshore financial centres. A higher proportion of its population is used to dealing with banks, wealth managers, and financial institutions, which may have left residents feeling too relaxed about talking about their finances over the phone to confident-sounding fraudster. Of course, if this is happening in the small island of Jersey in the English channel, it's likely to be happening elsewhere too. For now, however, its sister island of Guernsey appears to have escaped the surge in Revolut scams. It could just be the case that Jersey’s police just happens to serve a small enough population of well-heeled people to have spotted the pattern. Revolut told BBC News that they take fraud, and the risk of customer being targeted by scammers "extremely seriously," and urged its clients to remain vigilant when receiving unexpected communications. As we have said many times before on Hot for Security, banks will never ask a customer to share their passwords or security information, and anyone asking a customer to transfer their funds to a "safe account" is a scammer. No genuine bank will ever ask you to move your money somewhere else to "protect" it. A spokesperson for the digital bank went on to say that anyone who suspects they have been targeted should hang up the phone, and contact Revolut directly via its secure in-app chat function. Anyone who believes they’ve been a victim of fraud, or has handed over account information to someone claiming to be from their bank, should contact their bank immediately and report the matter to police. Fraud like this succeeds not through clever malware, but through sophisticated social engineering. A well-rehearsed phone script mixed with some manufactured panic can lead to an unsuspecting member of the public making a costly mistake.