CHARLESTON, S.C.–After initially saying it would not do so, Founders FCU here has decided to reimburse members whose accounts were emptied thanks to a sophisticated scam, even though the credit union itself was not at fault and there was no breach.
An unknown number of Founders FCU members were contacted via the phone by scammers identifying themselves as the credit union and claiming their accounts had been compromised. According to the members, the callers had card numbers and PINs, and were seeking additional information of the members that would allow the scammers to beat the two-factor identification safeguards.
A number of members surrendered the additional information and had their accounts emptied, with members sharing with local media how they had lost everything, with one member losing more than $5,000.
Founders FCU had initially told members it would not be reimbursing the funds, stating in a letter, “since your account information was provided to the individual by you, FFCU is not liable.”
‘I Was Surprised, Shocked’
But FFCU has now told local 7News it will reimburse the members for the funds lost.
“While it is our policy to not return funds to members when they have shared sensitive personal information to aid in fraudulent activity, we do realize this was a complex scam which created a financial hardship for these members,” the credit union said in a statement. “Our internal investigations revealed no personal information was compromised by Founders Federal Credit Union and the credit union was not at any point breached. We, however, empathize with these members and understand their vulnerability to this highly complicated and intellectual criminal activity and felt the right thing to do, in this case, was to refund their stolen funds.”
One of the victims, Amy Culletto, told 7News after she was informed the funds would be replaced, “I was surprised, shocked, I couldn’t believe it. Honestly part of me thought it was a scam again.”
Meanwhile, local Forest Acres, S.C., police said they have captured images of a suspect whom they allege made debit cards with the stolen information and used them at two Richland County sites.