Kūpuna: Stay wary of this ‘phantom hacker’ scam

HONOLULU (KHON2) — It’s one of the most intricate scams out there. The FBI is warning people to be wary of the “phantom hacker,” which they say is significantly impacting senior citizens.

Two-thirds of the $542 million lost to the phantom hacker scam in 2023 were senior citizens.

The FBI said it’s an evolution of more general tech support scams, layering fake tech support, financial institution and government personas to enhance the trust victims place in the scammers and identify the most lucrative accounts to target.

“It’s very difficult to keep on top of and keep ahead of all the newest trends. The good news is that everything kind of funnels out, if you will, all of these scams. They’re built on the same building blocks, the same cornerstones we’ve seen for decades,” said Cameron Nakashima, Better Business Bureau (BBB).

Here’s how it works:

• Scammer poses as tech support of a real company and contacts the victim.
• Scammer has them download a software program to allow the scammer computer access
• Scammer asks the victim to open their financial accounts to see if there are “unauthorized charges”
• Scammer tells victim they’ll be contacted by the financial institution’s fraud department
• Imposter poses as the fraud department, contacting the victim to say their account has been hacked and that they must move their money to a third-party account for safekeeping

The scammers even pose as the Federal Reserve or another US government agency with official-looking email letterheads to assure the victim of their legitimacy.

“All of a sudden, you’ve got two to three different parties all involved here, all of them are impostors, and they’re telling you, ‘Oh no, go along with what this other guy’s telling you.’ So it can be really hard to discern who’s telling you the truth when you’re stuck in that situation,” Nakashima said.

So what can you do? Remember to slow things down.

“It’s really important to know the generic red flags to look out for put a little twinge in your gut, says something’s up, something’s not right, and that’s your indicator. I need to pause, I need to break away, and I need to go do a little bit of research and not just rely on the incoming data, but I need to go search out something on my own.”

The BBB recommends you talk to kupuna about these types of scams when you get a chance. For more tips, visit the Better Business Bureau’s website.