Shocking security lapses by Vodacom cost me my money

ON DECEMBER 3, 2016, there was fraudulent activity in my bank account through which perpetrators accessed my account and stole R123 579.02.

My bankers, Standard Bank, were able to recover R49 420.13 from the fraudulent accounts into which my monies had been paid, but were unfortunately unable to recover the rest.

I am accordingly out of pocket to the amount of R74 158.89 plus interest charged, amounting to R9 763.65, which totals R83 922.54.

My banking profile provides that I receive SMSes for any transactions done on my account.

When I switched my cellphone on, on the evening of Sunday, December 3, I had “no service” at all. I put this down to there being a loss of service generally.

This “no service” issue persisted until the next Monday.

It was only on Sunday night that, on being able to log into my computer, the fraudulent action on my bank account was brought to my attention, as I received e-mail confirmation. In the ordinary course of events, had my cellphone service not been fraudulently disrupted, this activity would have been brought to my attention already on the Saturday evening.

When I contacted Vodacom that Monday morning, I was advised by an operator that there had been an illegal SIM swap on my phone and that I needed to deal with this at a Vodacom store, which I did.

I have engaged with Standard Bank on how this occurred, and have also sought the intervention of the Banking Ombudsman to conduct an investigation.

The outcome of the investigation is that my banking profile, which contains my cellphone number as a device for notifications, had not been changed; yet I did not receive the SMSes notifying me of the transactions.

I now know that the reason I did not receive these notifications is because there had been a fraudulent SIM swap on my cellphone which enabled the perpetrators to redirect all the SMSes from Standard Bank to the substituted SIM card.

Standard Bank has provided proof that SMSes were sent to my cellphone number in respect of every one of the fraudulent transactions that took place that Saturday evening.

This fraudulent SIM swap could only have taken place through the unlawful complicity of Vodacom employees. I know of no other way that this could have occurred.

This is not the first time that there has been fraudulent activity on my Vodacom account. On two occasions data bundles have been stolen from my Vodacom account with a combined value of R203 246.91. In both instances, Vodacom, without demur, reversed both the fraudulent charges to my account.

During my engagement with Vodacom on this issue of data theft, I was told there had been significant fraudulent activity within Vodacom.

In all these circumstances, I consider it appropriate for Vodacom to reimburse me for my damages. Wendy Berger

Georgie: Berger has finally been offered a “goodwill gesture” of R30 800. She says the fraudulent SIM swap would not have happened had Vodacom been “committed to combating any unlawful transactions and continually upgrading their systems to detect and prevent SIM swap fraud”, as their forensic department claimed, which admitted that, from their investigation, the unique usernames and passwords of the relevant customer care centre agents were fraudulently utilised to “unlawfully manipulate the system and circumvent security processes to perform the SIM swaps”.