Important Member Alerts

Don't Fall For It!!

• VISA telephone scam 2-27-08
• VISA telephone scam 8-8-07
• Sweepstakes scam

SeaComm Visa Cardholders Hit With Telephone Scam
February 27, 2008.

Members are reporting calls from someone claiming to represent SeaComm. There have been two types of calls reported so far. One is a recorded call requesting the member call back at the number given to verify important information regarding their account. The other type has been someone claiming that they can lower the member's interest rate, once the member gives them the Visa account number. This is a scam. SeaComm will not call you and request this information.

Do not give out your VISA or any other personal information over the telephone. If you feel your information has been compromised or have received a call that you wish to report, please contact our Call Center at 800-764-0566 or email your concern to helpdesk@seacomm.org.

SeaComm Visa Cardholders Hit With Telephone Scam - August 8, 2007

Members are reporting calls from someone claiming to represent SeaComm. The members are being asked to verify their VISA account information over the telephone. This is a scam to hijack members' identities and fraudulently use their VISA accounts.

Do not give out your VISA or any other personal information over the telephone. SeaComm will not call you and request this information. If you feel your information has been compromised or have received a call that you wish to report, please contact our Call Center at 800-764-0566 or email your concern to helpdesk@seacomm.org.

Have you seen or received a letter that looks like this one?

Did a check for $4,900 come with it?

If so, you are one of hundreds of people who has been targeted in a mail fraud. These letters were mailed from a Canadian address to people all over the United States. The check that is included with the letter looks exactly like a SeaComm check and is difficult to tell from a real check. It even has a real member's name on it and a member's account number.

Of course, the letter is a fake and so is the check. How do you know for sure?

You will then be congratulated on being a winner of a large amount of money, given a reference number, and subsequently asked to not make your winnings public just yet. For convenience's sake, you will almost certainly be given a name of a contact or financial secretary who is to allegedly help guide you through your award claims process.

What is necessary to keep in mind is that anytime anyone asks you to pay for something that they claim you have won, a red flag should go up. If anyone asks you to wire a payment via Western Union to Canada, another red flag should go up. If you happen to receive a solicitation of being an awards or lotto winner and then are provided with a check to allegedly cover taxes or fees, turn it into your local Postal Inspector's Office.

Many of these so-called contacts have in common is that they have a Canadian phone number for you to call- frequently out of Ontario and British Columbia- regardless of where they claim to originate.

Included with the letter will almost always be a legitimate looking check, with an amount that can range from several hundred to several thousand dollars. The solicitation will tell you that this check is to help you offset the pay for insurance, taxes, and shipping and handling fees which you will need to pay before you can claim your prize, and will then direct you to call their financial advisor in order to find out how to claim the winnings.

Sometimes this check may even be addressed as coming from a well-known and/or Fortune 500 company with wide name recognition, which may put you in a fake comfort zone. This is in actuality an instance of identity theft of a business, which may likely not be aware that its name and identity are being fraudulently used in a check scam.

As soon as you call the number provided on your solicitation, you will be instructed to deposit the check into your personal bank account. Here is where the essence of the check scam lays: as real as it may look, the check will not have any funds to back it up. Shortly after taking out what you think are the funds from the check, you will be instructed to wire a certain amount of money, usually via Western Union or MoneyGram, to a previously undisclosed third party location.

The money that you will be wiring will be your own, provided that you have enough in your account to cover the amount being sent. If not, within a few days your bank will realize that the check you deposited was a fake one, as a result of which it will bounce and you will be held liable for any insufficient fund fees at the least.

If you do receive a check such as this one - or any other suspicious mail telling you that you have won a large amount of money - your best course of action is to call the financial institution from which the check is from and send them the information you have received. They will appreciate it!!

For more information on mail fraud, visit http://www.bbb.org and read the alerts section.