Fraud Awareness for Applicants and Students

How to protect yourself from payment scams

Anyone can be a potential victim of a fraud. Students have been targeted in recent years by criminals offering assistance to transfer or exchange money internationally. These criminals usually claim they can provide a no-cost money transfer service or provide substantial discounts, gifts or commissions. The claims are wide and varied and can include pre-loaded debit cards, gift cards, iTunes cards, concessions, memberships or even discounts and reductions of your tuition fees.

New students with new ‘clean’ bank accounts can also be targeted by criminal gangs with enticements to ‘make easy money’, by helping to move payments across accounts. Criminals may encourage a student to send money to an illegitimate bank account or collect the numbers on the back of the victim’s cards. They can reach out to you through a variety of channels including by phone, post, email, or social media. Fraudsters can impersonate anyone — an official from your university, or a legitimate organisation such as the UK Home Office, an education agent, or a national advisory body such as UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA).

They could even pretend to be a senior student from the same university. In most cases, the fraudsters deduct charges or devalue your payment before passing it on to your university, if they pass anything on at all. The student may be offered to accept a payment and then be asked to pass that on to somebody else. In fact, the person contacting them may be part of a much wider serious-crime organisation involved with money laundering.

This is a very serious offence that can lead to severe consequences for the student as well as the institution. We will share some of the common types of frauds and scams targeted at students and some dos and don’ts that will help protect you from fraud, phishing, and card payment scams.

Tuition fee fraud

One of the most common scams targeting students is tuition fee fraud. This involves either an individual or agent offering to pay a student’s higher education fees on their behalf, in return for an upfront payment, or as soon as “proof” is provided of payment to the education institution. The payment is in lieu of the individual or agent paying all the fees using whatever payment method they employ. This almost invariably involves the individual or agent utilising stolen debit or credit card details, then logging in on behalf of the student and making a payment. This is illegal and is an example of money laundering. Any student knowing or believing that they are involved in such activity could be aiding and abetting money laundering and may be subject to arrest by law enforcement subject to the regional laws, and punitive action by their respective educational institution.

Examples of how Students can be unwittingly caught up in criminal activity

What the criminals say!

You can be approached by an ‘agent’, individual and/or another ‘student’ either in person or via social media. They will offer to help pay forthcoming tuition fees and may give you contact details for someone who can assist. The person assisting will promise to pay your student fees, and you will agree to a payment in return for the individual proving they have paid your student fees. Once a payment amount is agreed, the individual will utilise your login details and make a successful £1 payment using a stolen debit/credit card. A receipt for that £1 payment is obtained and altered to make it appear they have paid all of your outstanding student fees. On receipt of the ‘payment confirmation’, you pay the previously agreed amount, and this individual then disappears. Subsequently, you find out that you still owe the education institution all your outstanding fees minus the £1 payment.

You (the student) can be approached by an agent, individual and/or another student either in person or via social media. They will offer to provide help to pay forthcoming tuition fees and may give you contact details of someone who can assist. The person assisting will promise to pay your student fees in return for an upfront payment of 10% for administrative purposes. Once agreed they will either ask for the login details to wherever you normally pay your fees. The individual will then attempt to pay your fees using stolen bank account, or debit/credit details and is highly unlikely to be successful. However, as they have already received your payment of 10% of the fees, they will disappear before you can challenge them for non-payment of your student fees.

Consequences of the above scenarios

Both of the above are examples of criminality and in particular money laundering, which is a very serious offense. This could result in the following:

  • You could be formally arrested and end up with a criminal record
  • Your future career could be adversely affected by having a criminal record
  • Your reputation could be damaged
  • Your education institution may exclude you

Other types of scams

There are three primary forms of card payment fraud, which you should be aware of:

A term used to describe sending communications (emails, texts, instant messages) with a link that takes you to a fake website designed to steal personal and identifier information. The primary delivery mediums are email or SMS. It’s relatively easy to spot a phishing scam as it will often contain strange-looking senders disguised to look legitimate on the surface. It will not be personalised. It will say “Dear Customer” or “Dear” and then your email address. You should investigate beyond just looking at the title or body of an email and ensure the email address and domain are what you expect.

This involves the unauthorised use of your credit or debit card data (card number, billing address, security code, and expiry date) to purchase products and services in a non-face-to-face setting, such as e-commerce websites or over the telephone. Such attacks will commonly use compromised card details, perhaps obtained through a phishing scam.

These are often referred to as authorised push payment or bank transfer scams. This happens when the victim is tricked into making bank transfers to an account posing as a legitimate payee. Another level of impersonation fraud occurs when victim details are used by fraudsters to apply for financed goods, services or financial products. Such details can be obtained from phishing attacks or social engineering.

Be careful of frauds related to your student loan. Phishing emails often claim that fees or maintenance loans will be terminated if further information is not provided.

They often occur around August/September as that is when many students receive their first instalment for the year and have lots of communication with SLC.

You may be able to recognise it’s a scam, as emails may say ‘dear student’ rather than your name, or have bad spelling, grammar and punctuation. Scammers also try to pressure you into giving personal details by creating a sense of urgency, e.g., stating that you must respond within 24 hours, or you will not receive your loan.

A money mule is a person who transfers stolen money between different countries.

Money mules are recruited, sometimes unwittingly, by criminals to transfer illegally obtained money between different bank accounts. Money mules receive the stolen funds into their account, they are then asked to withdraw it and wire the money to a different account, often one overseas, keeping some of the money for themselves.

Money laundering is a serious criminal offence. Even if you’re unaware that the money you’re transferring was illegally obtained, you have played an important role in fraud and money laundering and can still be prosecuted. Criminals will often use fake job adverts or create social media posts about opportunities to make money quickly, to lure potential money mule recruits.

Dos and don’ts to protect yourself from fraudsters

Learn about scams and security

Learn more about tuition fee and refund scams, money laundering, secure websites, phishing, and credit payment scams. Useful links are:

Student online saftety guide

UKCISA Frauds and scams

Action Fraud

Use telephone preference services and two-factor authentication

Ask for a number to contact the person. Usually, a fraudster will never give out their details. Do not share anything over a phone call.

If in any doubt reach out to the University’s Student Finance Team  

When in doubt, always contact the Student Finance Team via the Finance Helpdesk

(finance-helpdesk@strath.ac.uk ). Never be pressured by any deadline, threats of retaliation or threats to revoke your student visa if payment is not made.

Save proof of every conversation, interaction or transfer

Save any conversation, email interaction, or chat with your ‘agent’, senior student, or person from the university — anyone can be a fraudster.

Never share bank details with anyone

Do not share your bank account number, credit or debit card details, or PIN with anyone. Your bank will never ask for full details, such as your PIN, over the phone.

Avoid too-good-to-be-true deals

Be cautious of unsolicited offers of easy money or discounts. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. There are no discounts on tuition fees offered via our social media channels.

Never share personal information via phone, email, post or social media

Avoid sharing any details about your university or university login credentials with anyone, especially on social media.

Do not confirm information

Do not share or confirm any personal information like name, PIN, address, phone number, or date of birth. Fraudsters often have incomplete information about you and reach out to fill in the gaps to conduct a scam. Always be suspicious and alert.