Bank warns of scammers

By DALE LUMA
SCAMMERS are using online social media platforms to lure unsuspecting customers to easy loan schemes, says BSP Financial Group Ltd acting chief executive officer Ronesh Dayal.
Dayal said the schemes would see the scammer offer proposals of fees paid to their accounts in lieu of fund dispensation.
He said the scammers would sometimes use logos of commercial banks such as BSP with pictures of executives available online to make their pages look authentic.
“Social media accounts and pages can be created by individuals and scammers without any verification by the social media provider such as Facebook,” Dayal told The National.
“It’s fairly easy to take a snippet of BSP’s logo or use a publicly available picture of BSP executives on these pages to give it an authentic look.
“There are over four billion social media pages worldwide and it’s nearly impossible to track each of them to restrict scammers and cyber criminals from creating fake pages to lure unsuspecting customers. If a fake page is reported to BSP, we proactively approach the social media providers and report these fake pages to take the page down.
“Moreover, most of these fake pages are created using fake identities and therefore, prosecuting the scammers is extremely challenging.
“Scammers try to lure unsuspecting customers to easy loan schemes with proposals of fees paid to their accounts in lieu of fund dispensation.
“BSP has no such arrangements with anyone or any other financial institute for such schemes.
“BSP offers loans and other products through its official channels and due process is followed in processing of the loan applications and dispensation of funds into the customer’s account.”
Dayal cautioned customers to be wary of such money-making schemes on unfamiliar social media pages.
He added that anyone in doubt could contact the bank on its official webpage (www.bsp.com.pg) , (email [email protected]) or call the BSP contact centre on 3201212 or 70301212.