When people get scammed and money is transferred out of their bank, why isn’t there a trail to easily find the scammer? If the money is transferred into some foreign country that won’t allow tracing, why dont you get a notification of sus activity before the transaction goes trough?

Question

i find it amazing that the scammers have such and easy and forgiving path to potentially taking all of your life savings if on the card with all of your credit card info, or even without the cvv number. and it can not be traced and they wont face any penalty for stealing or trying to steal. and why cant you set up your card that it requires a app approval or a pin for all online purchases that would literally make the card info by itself useless? any app protection you use in online store to confirm on your phone is by already trusted stores making sure scammers dont use stolen info there so basically only the businesses are protecting themselves

and if you say the scammers take the cash out somewhere, how can this be done without having a physical card put in the machine with pin or showed at the bank counter with connected id? why does it feel like its all set up for scammers to scam and get away with it and you have to think of loopholes to protect yourself but that even wont work if the employee at the bank leaks your cc info even to never used card anywhere.

ideas?

In: Economics

Answer 1

Basically there are just lots of ways the system leaks. Imagine this perfectly regular occurrence: you list something on an auction site for sale, someone buys it, they pay you by transferring to your bank account and you send the item to the address they gave you.

Whose money arrived in your account?

Answer 2

A lot of people have already touched on mule accounts and where the money is funnelled too, so I won’t dive into that. But having worked in financial crime for a few years one of the biggest issues is the ease of payment channels (everyone expects real time transactions – so that’s what they get, inherent risks and all) and timing. By the time you inform your bank of the scam activity the funds have probably moved through multiple institutions and reached their end destination (could be a cash withdrawal halfway around the globe, crypto or even online trading for gold the possibility’s are almost limitless if you put your mind to it)

There’s a lot being done in this space to combat scams, but it will take a joint effort across the globe and different industries. But it’s a game of cat and mouse. You need to disrupt the cycle by either stamping out the mules, or go straight to the source and target those silly scam messages.

Card fraud is much different, whether it’s Visa or MC they have schemes for chargebacks that will usually result in funds being returned for fraud (pending 2fa and other authentication methods – at least with visa if its had 2fa then no chargebacks)