Pioneer Bank has informed RPD the bank has seen many cases recently in which customers have been scammed or have been targets of attempted scams.
Customers have received phone calls telling them there are fraudulent charges on their debit cards and in order to receive a credit back, they will need to pay a fee to have the charges reversed. In at least one case, a bank customer was instructed to place money into a Bitcoin machine. Pioneer Bank never requests a customer place funds into a Bitcoin machine.
In some cases, the fraudsters have coached bank customers in lying to tellers about why they’re getting the funds from their bank account. Pioneer Bank is ready to help the customer avoid being scammed, but the customer must be honest, and need not be embarrassed, when a teller questions the reason for a large withdrawal.
The bank is also seeing much attempted fraud through email compromise, fraudulent checks, and online financial and communications services such as Bitcoin, Cash App, Wire, Crypto and Zelle. Romance scams also are used to try to fraudulently extract money from people.