Accounts emptied with one click: victims in debt without knowing it. Here’s where

Online scam alert, here’s where

There Apulia must cope with a wave of online scams. In the last year in this Region there have been approximately 3000 cases of false loans, charges for expenses never made and emptied accounts. Frauds based on the identity theftas reported by Corriere del Mezzogiorno, have exceeded a value of 13 million euros. The Apulia therefore it ranks fifth in the ranking of the Regions with the most scams. This is what the Crif Observatory Report (Central Risk Office for Credit Intermediation).

Crif reports that in Italy the credit fraud have exceeded 150 million euros and the most affected regions are Lombardy (13.8%), Sicily (13.1%), Campania (12.7%), Lazio (9.3%) and Puglia (8.9%). The most common are those with amounts between 5,000 and 10,000 euros (+46.7%) or above 20 thousand euros (+28.6%).

“The evidence of the phenomenon of fraud unfortunately reveals how criminals are increasingly expert,” explains Simone Capecchiexecutive director of Crif– also aided by new technologies which, on the one hand, enable increasingly sophisticated and difficult to identify attacks against people and companies and, on the other, allow the creation of new but non-existent identities to perpetrate credit fraud”.

“Financial players – continues the expert – must therefore continue to invest to strengthen prevention and control systems, leveraging analytics and advanced digital platforms, for example by exploiting the potential offered by AI (artificial intelligence), to make credit onboarding and origination processes increasingly efficient and secure”. In short, the risk of finding yourself with a loan you never asked for, and realizing the scam after having paid some installments, is starting to be high”.

Loans for the purchase of goods and services are the forms of financing most susceptible to fraud (45.3% of all cases in 2023). Fraud related to personal loans is increasing (+14%) with an average amount exceeding 13,500 euros. The number of victims among the over 60s is increasing (+9.7%) while it is decreasing among the under 30s (-12%). The most affected group remains the 35-50 age group. A report by Ministry of Economy and Finance reports that the most used techniques by online scammers are malware, phishing, trashing and boxing. In these cases, criminals search for personal information in the garbage or in the mailbox.