The National Bank assures that the majority of its commercial customers targeted by fraud in September have been “fully reimbursed”.
“The majority of affected clients have recovered 100% of their funds,” assures Geneviève Turbide-Potvin, senior vice-president, businesses and Private Management 1859, in an interview with La Presse. “In the coming days, we are hopeful that we will have responded to all customers. »
According to the Bank, “a few dozen” commercial accounts have suffered from a wave of phishing fraud since mid-September, as reported by Le Devoir. Some of them were completely empty after the hackers, even the lines of credit.
Contacted by La Presse, Pascal Gosset had just been contacted by the financial institution on this subject, late Monday afternoon. His car resale business was allegedly stolen $60,000 from his business account.
“I was told just before you called me that I was getting 100% refunded,” the entrepreneur said.
Others have still not received the long-awaited communication. This is the case of Stéphane Lessard, president of the industrial equipment company MAR-Optimisation, in Beauce. The company was robbed of $240,000 on September 14.
He assures that the National Bank offered him last week to reimburse him 50% of the embezzled sum, in addition to a loan of $40,000 to weather the storm. “I said, ‘Do I have a choice?’ »
The bank asked him to go to the branch to sign a “receipt”, assures the entrepreneur, who sent La Presse an email effectively referring to such a document. However, he never signed it.
In an interview with La Presse, the National Bank nevertheless assured that it had never offered such a solution to defrauded customers. “We are not in the business of making offers to the customer. We are in a position to recover all the funds for the client,” assures Geneviève Turbide-Potvin.
“There was a terrible lack of communication,” deplores Pascal Gosset.
Geneviève Turbide-Potvin recognizes that the bank could have reacted better with affected customers.
“I look at this today and I say to myself: for those for whom this is not yet resolved, we could have had better communication, more frequent communication, to be able to tell them where we are in our investigation? she suggests. But in the end, we keep it very opaque, because we don’t want to create or give hackers new ways to come back to us. »
Also in an interview with La Presse, the head of information security, André Boucher, specifies that the customers affected by the fraud were all victims of some form of phishing. “There was no breach of confidentiality internally,” he insists.
According to him, the phenomena of fraud targeting multiple clients of the same institution “comes somewhat in successive waves”. “Maybe it was the National Bank’s turn to attract attention,” he says.
The investigation is still ongoing, but André Boucher specifies that the criminals used several different techniques: fake site where the customer is invited to enter their contact details, fake text messages, robotic calls… “It can go as far as the fake representative who actually calls the person,” he says.
“Normal” hacking techniques for him. “But this is far from normal for the victim,” he said. For the victim, it is important that we have compassion and that we try to find a solution as quickly as possible. »
Pascal Gosset says that the fraud suffered in his commercial account took place despite the use of a two-factor authentication technique with a security key.
He says he’s surprised that no one was able to prevent the fraud: his payments usually go to the United States, while in his case, the fraudulent transfer went to an account in the Ottawa region.
By breaking silence today on these frauds, the National Bank is trying to pay the price, believes Mylène Forget, president of Massy Forget Langlois, public relations.
“Our banking system is built on trust. If it’s lost, it’s extremely difficult to rebuild it,” she says.
In this case, the frauds took place in mid-September. For her, the bank’s response to its robbed customers comes late. “It’s a long time,” says Mylène Forget. We are now in mid-October, there are people who have had their bank accounts and their lines of credit emptied. This meant that companies had to make difficult decisions… It’s the worst thing that can happen when you can no longer pay your employees. »
First vice-president of communications, Debby Cordeiro agrees that the National Bank will necessarily have to do a “post-mortem” of these incidents, once the investigation is completed.
“We’re not saying we’re perfect,” she says. We know we can be better. We’re going to be. »