Common Scams
Each day, millions of emails are sent. A lot
of these are legitimate, but many contain scams
attempting to steal your money, your identity
or both.
 Arizona
Federal works with Cyveillance
Anti-Phishing™ to quickly identify and
shut down online scams.
Below is a list of common scams. If you receive
an email or a phone call asking for personal information
or requesting you send money, investigate further
before providing information or sending money.
Check Cashing with an 800 number that
answers 'Arizona Federal'
This is a variation on the Nigerian check cashing
scam. A member is mailed a check and asked to
call an 800 number. The
operator at the other end answers the phone 'Arizona
Federal Bank' or 'Arizona Federal Credit Union' and confirms the check is good,
confirms the date it was issued, etc.
If you receive a check like this, please do not
respond. We don't ask you to call us and confirm
a check is good.
To contact Arizona Federal use the following
phone numbers: (602) 683-1000
number in Maricopa County, (520) 325-5662
in Tucson, or (800) 523-4603
to call toll-free outside of Maricopa County.
Account Verification
This is the most common type of phishing scam.
Frequently, scammers will send out an email claiming
to be from the Credit Union National Association
(CUNA), the National Credit Union Administration
(NCUA), the Federal Credit Unions (FCU) network
or some other financial group. It may ask you
to verify a recent transaction, or it may announce
a new security measure. It claims your account
will be locked unless you click on a link and
verify your account information. They apologize
for the inconvenience and strongly encourage you
to act quickly.
Prize Money/Lottery Winner Notification
Scammers will often send out an email congratulating
you on winning some type of contest such as a
sweepstakes. They claim a huge sum of money is
waiting for you. They may ask you to send a large
amount of money to cover processing costs or fees.
They may also send a cashier's check and ask you
to cash it and mail the cash to a processing office.
They usually tell you to act quick because of
a short deadline.
Counterfeit Money Orders
You may be asked over the Internet to help negotiate
United States Postal Service (USPS) money orders.
The scammer says that he cannot get to the United
States to negotiate them. If you help this unfortunate
person, you can keep a percentage of the item
or a flat fee. The remaining funds are to be wire
transferred to the counterfeiter outside of the
United States. Frequently there are five or six
items to be cashed, with each item being $1,000
or less.
Advanced Fee Scams
Use caution in dealing with anyone claiming association
with a financial entity unfamiliar to you. In
particular, do not make any advance payment (no
matter what it's called) for the purposes of opening
an account, paying a government fee, etc. In almost
all cases, fraudsters will request payment to
be sent to an individual, and not the financial
entity named.
CitiBank Scam (other institutions may be used)
Phishers have circulated an email claiming to
be from Citibank and promoting their Fraud Protection
Services. It is a very convincing spoof. The link
in the email sends the recipient to a server not
owned by CitiBank. Both Citibank customers and
noncustomers may receive this or a similar email.
Any other financial institution or major
online source such as eBay or Paypal may be used
for a similar scam.
Work at Home Position
You may receive an unsolicited email claiming
to be from Monster.com or another online company
for a work at home position making deposits for
a "foreign" company. The line they use
is they cannot get a bank account in the US so
they will have their US customers mail checks
to the "payment processor" who gets
to keep a percentage for their work at home income.
They encourage people who respond to use their
own private checking account. They then mail fraudulent
checks to the 'processor' who deposits and wires
85-95% of the proceeds out of country. When the
item returns as fraudulent the 'processor' is
on the hook.
This has been going on for about a year but we
are seeing another rash of these.
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