Caller: Australian Bank Identification Verification System

Fraud Alert, Fraud Alert, Fraud Alert, Fraud Alert
Received a phone call from a woman, during the SCAM witching hours beginning around midday. English was very obviously not her first language. This woman made no effort to identify either herself or the organisation on behalf of which she was calling before asking me if I knew a Mr John James. I asked who she was and what the call was about. Her response was that her organisation, that she did not name, represented the 7 major Australian Banks and that her role was the verification of identity information presented to and used by those banks. She advised that "someone has used your identity information to change your name to John through the Commonwealth Bank" and was attempting to "commit fraud using your identity information, including your name". I shared how interesting it seemed that someone "had changed my name with the Commonwealth Bank" because I did not then nor had I ever held a Commonwealth Bank Account or product. I put to her that since she had come to know that "someone has changed your name at the Commonwealth bank and using your identity information and that since she claimed to represented the 7 major Australian banks, with a number of which I do have active accounts, she must surely know my REAL name from the mobile phone number on which she was then calling me. I asked her to tell me my name. She immediately terminated the call. It would seem that the most likely purpose of this call was to attempt to establish a false level of trust and credibility and then to manipulate and maneuver me into revealing my own personal identity information, for the misrepresented purposes of investigating the fraud this woman was alleging was being perpetrated in my name through the Commonwealth Bank, that would thereby permit whomever she was really representing to commit the very fraud that she was clearly falsely representing she was investigating.