As a «one-off gesture of goodwill», OCBC has made full payouts to its recently discovered phishing victims which totaled nearly 800 and more than $10 million in losses.
OCBC completed arrangements to make full payouts to all 790 SMS phishing victims, according to a statement, which suffered losses totalling S$13.7 million ($10.1 million).
«We also took into consideration that our customer service and response fell short of our own expectations, that could have affected loss mitigation in some of the cases,» the bank said, describing the payments as a «one-off gesture of goodwill» due to the circumstances of the scam.
SMS Phishing
Following an investigation, OCBC found that victims had provided their online banking login details and one-time PINs to phishing websites to enable the takeover of accounts and fraudulent transactions.
80 percent of the amount lost occurred between December 23 and 31, in a period that saw inquiries to the bank’s call center surge more than 40 percent.
No further related fraudulent transactions were made over the past few weeks.
