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.