Don’t Be Fooled by a Fraudster

They are smart, hard-working, and resourceful. They can be quite personable and friendly. They will appeal to your best customer service impulses. 

And they want to rip you off. 

They are fraudsters, and they aren’t going away. “It’s impossible to keep fraudsters out of the distribution system,” said Doug Nass, the Airline Reporting Corp.’s fraud investigator. “It’s their job to find that one agent a day” who can be manipulated.

In a webinar, Nass provided tips on how to get the better of these con artists.  

First, don’t just delete a suspicious e-mail. Forward it to ARC so it can track e-mail accounts, aliases, passenger names, and credit cards. “We take all this intelligence and do a link analysis,” he said. 

As a fraudster changes card numbers, phone number, alias, and e-mail address, sometimes one of those items will stay the same. In that event, ARC will turn the data over to law enforcement. 

If you think the sender might be legitimate but are not sure, “spend four or five minutes searching and determine your comfort level with a new customer,” Nass said.  

There are some free Internet tools that can help. Check the sender’s phone number on whitepages.com. If a reverse search turns up a VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) line, that can be a red flag, Nass said. Some legitimate businesses use VOIP services, which include Skype, but a great many fraudsters do, too. 

Check the sender’s physical address on Google Maps. It might turn out to be a hospital or church, or it might be nonexistent.  

Trust but verify. Some fraudsters have gone to the trouble of creating websites that look professional. Again, check the phone number and address. The site may show a Cincinnati address and area code, but its owner may be in Bogota, Colombia. If you receive a phone call from a potential fraudster, don’t rely on Caller ID; phone numbers and IDs can be spoofed. 

Sometimes, a fraudster will e-mail documents that “prove” the sender’s identity, such as a driver’s license or passport pages. Don’t assume these are real. Nass said they may have been Photoshopped. Scrutinize them carefully: As adept as they are, sometimes fraudsters make mistakes. 

For example, any photo in which the subject is not facing straight ahead would be rejected by the passport agency. In addition, the date of expiration of the passport should be 10 years minus one day from the date of its issuance. So a passport issued on Aug. 20, 2013, should expire on Aug. 19, 2023. 

Take a close look at the passport photo. One merry fraudster found a circa-1905 photo of Harry Houdini, the escape artist, on the Internet and used it. Sadly, he got away with it. 

Serial offenders often operate overseas, Nass said. Common venues are Lagos, Nigeria; Accra, Ghana; Johannesburg, South Africa; Lima, Peru; Bogota, Colombia, and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. “It’s where their customer base is,” Nass said. 

Over the past few months, “fraud in Jakarta, Indonesia, has exploded, targeting agents in the U.S.,” he said.  

If a new customer requests a ticket for next-day travel to or from any of these areas, a giant red flag should go up. That’s a telltale sign of fraud. Notify ARC immediately. 

Often, though, a diligent fraudster works to gain your confidence before going in for the kill. He will buy a cheap ticket from New York to Dallas three weeks out. Only after you are comfortable with his business will he pull the rug out from under you, leaving you vulnerable for thousands of dollars of losses. 

“It’s social engineering,” Nass said. “These guys are good at piercing holes in your customer- service skills. They pose as doctors who need to move a patient, m inistersdoing missionary work, lawyers who need to move clients. Who wouldn’t want to help these people out?”