FINANCIAL Industry Disputes Resolution Centre (Fidrec) has issued a new alert about fraudsters posing as Fidrec and bank staff.

These conmen try to solicit personal banking information from unsuspecting consumers. Fidrec has already lodged a police report.

Fidrec is an independent institution which specialises in resolving disputes between financial institutions and their customers.

The latest case is similar to an instance in June last year when several Central Provident Fund (CPF) members were contacted via their mobile phones by a person pretending to be a CPF officer.

In one case, a woman was conned of $2,700 after she was approached by a woman falsely claiming to be a CPF staff member.

The conmen impersonating Fidrec staff claimed that the consumers owed money to banks and other financial institutions, and asked for personal information such as bank account numbers.

In its statement yesterday, Fidrec warned that unless consumers have lodged a complaint with the centre, they should not expect to be contacted by any of its staff.

'Fidrec would like to state that Fidrec's staff would not contact any consumer unless he or she had first lodged a complaint with Fidrec,' it said.

As the matter is currently under police investigation, Fidrec declined to provide details of the incidents leading to this warning.

It stated only that it has been recently brought to Fidrec's attention that several consumers have been contacted by persons posing as bank staff and Fidrec staff, even though these consumers had not lodged any complaints with the disputes resolution centre.

Consumers who have queries should call Fidrec on 6327-8878.

When contacted, various banks in Singapore reiterated the warning that consumers should exercise caution over releasing any personal banking information.

Said Citibank Singapore head of corporate affairs Adam Rahman: 'We would like to advise customers not to release their personal banking information to individuals whom they have no prior association with.'

OCBC Bank's head of planning and customer assurance, Mr Ng Kwok Leong, said that it is not the bank's policy to make unsolicited requests for any account details from customers via telephone or e-mails. These include asking for a customer's confidential information such as Internet banking, phone banking or ATM PINs, user IDs or passwords.

Standard Chartered Bank Singapore's country chief risk officer, Ms Xie Wen, also said that it is not its practice to call customers to verify personal account information over the phone.

If such contact is made, or if the customer has any doubts, he is advised to contact the bank immediately.

A spokesman at United Overseas Bank also reminded customers that they should not release any personal banking information to any purported bank staff over the telephone, as such information would already be available to the bank.

In the scam involving the CPF Board, the victim ended up transferring money into a stranger's account, after the fraudster called her and said that she needed to make some ATM transactions in order to receive her GST credits.

The fraudster claimed to be from the GST Credits department, and was even able to provide the bank account numbers of the victim and her husband and to say how much money the latter had in his bank account.

The CPF Board's advice to members then was not to respond to such calls as it would not make calls instructing people to conduct ATM transactions, especially fund transfers.

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