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Speaker 1: Can be with the Daily Mavericks. Rebecca Davis, Hello Rebecca,

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Speaker 1: Hello John.

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Speaker 2: I was just thinking I don't want to cannibalize myself,

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Speaker 2: if that's.

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Speaker 1: All right, Please don't, please don't. I have been reading

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Speaker 1: with enormous interest your series on bank fraud and the

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Speaker 1: various aspects of bank fraud, because inevitably it's something that

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Speaker 1: has come up a lot on our radio show as well,

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Speaker 1: and so reading the different threads that you're putting together

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Speaker 1: has been fascinating.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, John. So this started off because, as I

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Speaker 2: observed in my first piece, the only category of crime

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Speaker 2: in South Africa that is rising exponentially other than kidnapping

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Speaker 2: is commercial crime. That's what the police calls it, commercial crime.

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Speaker 2: It's almost doubled over the last ten years, according to

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Speaker 2: our analysis, and yet it's not something we ever really

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Speaker 2: hear about, at least not as a concept, if you

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Speaker 2: know what I mean. No one's marching against it or

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Speaker 2: debating it in parliament. And my first question was what

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Speaker 2: do we mean by commercial crime? What is that crime

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Speaker 2: actually entail? And I soon realized that I was bentically

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Speaker 2: never going to be able to answer that question because

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Speaker 2: the police does not break down the data for this

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Speaker 2: in any way. So every four months they release the

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Speaker 2: crime stats and there is just a category that says

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Speaker 2: commercial crime. It's ever rising, and no one seems to

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Speaker 2: know what's in it. The hawks I discovered have subcategories

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Speaker 2: of commercial crime which range from strange, you know, fraudulent

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Speaker 2: offenses to anything to do its extortion or you know,

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Speaker 2: a huge range. The NPA works with a totally different

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Speaker 2: taxonomy for commercial crimes, so really it's impossible to say

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Speaker 2: what exactly is driving the rise in those figures, except

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Speaker 2: for the one area we do know about, and that

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Speaker 2: is digital bank fraud. Digital bank fraud exploding and particularly

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Speaker 2: in the last three years. But year on you. In fact,

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Speaker 2: twenty twenty fours figures were double twenty twenty three figures.

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Speaker 2: That shows the extent of the problem. Everyone knows someone

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Speaker 2: John who's lost money from their account, and the difficulty

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Speaker 2: is that if you ask the banks what's causing this,

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Speaker 2: they will tell you. The rise of AI has allowed

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Speaker 2: scammers ever more sophisticated ways to hand to persuade people

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Speaker 2: to hand over their login details for banking or their

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Speaker 2: you know, their means of approving transactions, adding beneficiaries, and

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Speaker 2: to be fair. In a lot of cases, that is true,

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Speaker 2: people are being manipulated in increasingly sophisticated ways. For instance,

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Speaker 2: to be a successful thoughts you at least have to

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Speaker 2: be able to draft a convincing looking message from a

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Speaker 2: bank in English. Say that's no longer the case. You know,

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Speaker 2: all the stuff can be automated from start to finish

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Speaker 2: using LMS, using AI, so the barrier at the entry

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Speaker 2: is so much lower now. But the real issue what

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Speaker 2: I experienced, John, is that people often genuinely are unaware

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Speaker 2: that in some way they have given away the keys

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Speaker 2: to their own castle. And they don't realize that that

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Speaker 2: weird link they clicked on three weeks ago which led

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Speaker 2: them to some you know, some dodgy looking website, but

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Speaker 2: which somehow convinced you at the time to put in

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Speaker 2: your details or whatever. They don't realize that at some

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Speaker 2: point in the last X number of weeks or whatever,

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Speaker 2: they did compromise their own security, and as a result,

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Speaker 2: when money goes missing from their accounts, they cannot understand it.

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Speaker 2: I mean, and I totally relate to this personally. But

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Speaker 2: as a result, there is this huge widespread perception that

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Speaker 2: it is bank insiders who are responsible for a lot

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Speaker 2: of fraud. And what made it difficult for me is

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Speaker 2: that the banks, for their part, are adamant that this

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Speaker 2: never happens, that bank employees just are not involved in

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Speaker 2: boards at all. In fact, they're not just not doing it.

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Speaker 2: It's impossible technically for them to be doing these things

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Speaker 2: like adding beneficiaries you know, to accounts, or lifting account limits,

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Speaker 2: et cetera. And that claim by the bank is also

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Speaker 2: clearly not true because if you go and have a

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Speaker 2: look at recent over the past few years, criminal cases

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Speaker 2: involving bank employees, you will find a number of successful

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Speaker 2: prosecutions where bank employees have done exactly the things that

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Speaker 2: banks claim they can't do, namely, add beneficiaries, change the

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Speaker 2: number to which one time pins get sent on someone's account,

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Speaker 2: lift accounts limits, et cetera, et cetera. So the bank, then,

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Speaker 2: you know, will never admit that employees are responsible. They

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Speaker 2: never give any details on how much frauds are experienced

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Speaker 2: at all. In fact, one of the only concrete numbers

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Speaker 2: I got out of any of the banks during this

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Speaker 2: investigation was that CAPITEC told me that since January twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty five till now, So that's what fifteen months, they

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Speaker 2: thwarted three hundred and twenty five thousand fraudulent conceptions. Wow,

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Speaker 2: that's one bank, John, one bank, and that gives some

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Speaker 2: idea of the scale of the problem because obviously what

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Speaker 2: they didn't tell me is what volume of fraudulent transactions

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Speaker 2: actually did go through. But we know that it's in

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Speaker 2: the billions every year. It's just that the banks aren't

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Speaker 2: about to admit this stuff very openly. And when you,

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Speaker 2: as a consumer, try to find back, you will find

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Speaker 2: your options are highly limited because you cannot get access

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Speaker 2: to the investigations that the banks have carried out in

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Speaker 2: your account. You will simply have to take the bank's

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Speaker 2: word for it when they tell you we've had a

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Speaker 2: look at this and your account was compromised in your

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Speaker 2: own details. So that's not on us, that's on you,

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Speaker 2: And you can argue in vain, you can argue to

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Speaker 2: you're blue in the face if those details, if the

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Speaker 2: details you correspond to your banking log in details, then

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Speaker 2: really you are in a lot of trouble as far

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Speaker 2: as getting your money back goes. Even if you have

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Speaker 2: legitimately been the victim of some terrible hacking or fishing expedition,

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Speaker 2: but John, I could carry on forever. But can I

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Speaker 2: conclude with a few point things I've learned this week

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Speaker 2: about how to stay safe from or perhaps just to

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Speaker 2: lower the magnimum risk, and little bits because there are

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Speaker 2: some things that I hadn't realized. I mean, everyone knows,

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Speaker 2: I think the obvious stuff, which is, you know, don't

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Speaker 2: give your bank card details out over the phone, or

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Speaker 2: don't don't give your pen. But there's other stuff that

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Speaker 2: I was not aware. Here's one of them. If there is,

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Speaker 2: if you contracted some kind of service and you now

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Speaker 2: need to pay the suppliers, get the to send you

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Speaker 2: the invoice fire WhatsApp rather than emails, because there have

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Speaker 2: been a number of cases where emails are intercepted and

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Speaker 2: the banking details are changed. So it's safer fee to

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Speaker 2: do that to receive the invoice fire WhatsApp where there's

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Speaker 2: less likelihood that it can be tampered with. I mean,

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Speaker 2: I thought this was science fiction, but apparently it happens

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Speaker 2: quite frequently. If your phone suddenly displays emergency calls only

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Speaker 2: on it, contact your bank immediately because it can indicate

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Speaker 2: a sim swop, which is a big problem for you.

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Speaker 2: Make sure that on your banking system settings that your

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Speaker 2: cell phone number is the only default for OTPs to

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Speaker 2: add new beneficiaries, because you may not be aware some

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Speaker 2: of the time that email is the secondary backup method,

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Speaker 2: and this makes you a hell of a lot more

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Speaker 2: exposed to risk, because if they hack your email, they've

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Speaker 2: got a lot better chance of adding beneficiaries. If you

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Speaker 2: get a call from a bank that you assume it's

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Speaker 2: from a bank and on your phone screen scraps slashes

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Speaker 2: up x bank, do not assume that that is actually

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Speaker 2: the bank, because criminals are sophisticated enough these days to

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Speaker 2: be able to create that illusion. And finally, I guess,

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Speaker 2: don't use your phone in public. I mean, this is

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Speaker 2: such an obvious one, but the point is now the

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Speaker 2: number one dream for a criminal is just to swipe

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Speaker 2: it out of your hand while you're on the street

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Speaker 2: waiting for your Uber or whatever, because it'll be unlocked,

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Speaker 2: and in those precious moments they can keep it unlocked

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Speaker 2: into perpetuity, get into all your apps, and so forth. Finally, John,

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Speaker 2: I mean, and this is the most extreme one, but

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Speaker 2: I have heard from some cybersecurity purists that if you

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Speaker 2: really really care about staying safe, in terms of online banking,

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Speaker 2: you simply should not have a banking app installed at all.

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Speaker 2: You should just do away with that altogether and suffer

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Speaker 2: the endless inconvenience of just not having that service available

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Speaker 2: to you.

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Speaker 1: Brad wants to know how much you find out found

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Speaker 1: out about virtual card fraud, Rebecca.

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Speaker 2: So it happens a lot if you're If you give

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Speaker 2: away your card details which is to say, your front

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Speaker 2: number and your CVV to a scammer over the phone,

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Speaker 2: they can use that to produce a virtual card and

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Speaker 2: what they can Oh sorry, I'm not sure if this

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Speaker 2: is actually what they're asking, but those details are enough

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Speaker 2: to clone a card that can then be replicated physically

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Speaker 2: to withdraw money from an ATM. And once again, if

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Speaker 2: it is your card details used and your PIN number,

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Speaker 2: then you're telling the bank that it wants you withdrawing

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Speaker 2: that money. You your I mean, you're yeah, you have

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Speaker 2: a hard time of John. I dealt with a case

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Speaker 2: where a woman said, that wasn't me draining my account.

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Speaker 2: They said it was your credit card and pin. She said,

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Speaker 2: go and look at the CCTV. They did so the

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Speaker 2: description the person captured was clearly not her, and then

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Speaker 2: they said simply, Well, someone must have taken your card

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Speaker 2: out of your wallets while you weren't aware. Perhaps it

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Speaker 2: was your domestic workers. That I don't have a domestic worker,

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Speaker 2: so you know it is really hard.

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Speaker 1: Okay, then you have found a new and interesting app

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Speaker 1: have you?

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Speaker 2: I have, John, I've found an out that translates for you,

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Speaker 2: but translates in a more useful way than just silly

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Speaker 2: old English to French or English to Zula or whatever.

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Speaker 2: It will translate your normal language into corporate buzz buzzword

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Speaker 2: speech LinkedIn speech, they call it, and also into gen

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Speaker 2: Z's speech. So I thought you could give me a

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Speaker 2: few sentences and I'm going to plug an end and

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Speaker 2: give you the translations in both of these two languages.

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Speaker 1: Oh okay, So I I thought I was supposed to

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Speaker 1: give you some LinkedIn language. Okay, but I did write

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Speaker 1: some sentences that I thought I was interested to find

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Speaker 1: out how they meths that might sound in gen Z

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Speaker 1: and gen Z is anybody born between nineteen ninety seven

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Speaker 1: and twenty twelve, I think, just to make that clear

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Speaker 1: for our listeners, yes, hees sentence one, I'm okay, I'm

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Speaker 1: fascinated by the lack of nuance in contemporary discourse.

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Speaker 2: Okay, I'm fascinated by the lack of nuance in contemporary discourse.

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Speaker 2: Discourse is actually a very gen Z term, I've got

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Speaker 2: to say, although probably slightly different to the way you

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Speaker 2: use it, lack of nuance and type of John, there

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Speaker 2: was contemporary discourse. Okay, this is your translation, John, I

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Speaker 2: am low key shook, low key shook. Sorry, hold on,

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Speaker 2: I am low key shook by the lack of nuance.

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Speaker 2: It's actually sending me giving zero brain cells for real.

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Speaker 1: Okay. I think that Jean Paul Sartre was absolutely spot

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Speaker 1: on in his observation that hell is other people.

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Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, John, I knew you were going to

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Speaker 2: do this. I'm just going to abbreviate to Suck was

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Speaker 2: correct in his observation that hell is other people. Yes,

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Speaker 2: I mean that is also called a gen Z sentiment,

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Speaker 2: is other people? Right? Again, it's very low key. Suck

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Speaker 2: was low key cooking when he said hell is other

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Speaker 2: people for real, for real.

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Speaker 1: Okay.

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Speaker 2: That's a bit disappointing, isn't it.

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Speaker 1: And the third one, third final one. I am so

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Speaker 1: sad that the optimism of the Flower Power generation has dissipated.

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Speaker 2: I'm soo said that the optimism of the Flower Power generation.

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Speaker 2: I seem that yours John.

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Speaker 3: People has dissipated, dissipated, right, I don't feel like to

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Speaker 3: hear your gen z is how accurate they think these

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Speaker 3: translations are.

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Speaker 2: It's actually so mad that the Flower Power vibes didn't

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Speaker 2: stay main character energy. I'm literally crying or in right now.

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Speaker 1: I love it. Thank you very much to Rebecca Davis,

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Speaker 1: Senior Daily Maverick journalist,