"Card Delivery Driver"... Voice Phishing Resurges Again

“This is a card delivery courier. You applied for the ○○ card, right? I’m just a delivery worker, so I don’t know the details, but the customer service phone number is written on the card envelope, so please contact them.”

Recently, phone financial fraud (voice phishing), which had been slowing down, is once again on the rise.

According to the National Police Agency’s National Investigation Headquarters on the 21st, the number of voice phishing cases from January to November last year was 18,676, with damages amounting to 725.7 billion KRW. It is analyzed that the damages significantly increased due to the emergence of scenarios impersonating card delivery workers. In fact, reports of card delivery impersonation received by the Police Agency’s Integrated Reporting and Response Center for Telecommunication Financial Fraud surged from 88 cases in 2023 to 6,619 cases in 2024 as of November last year.

Criminal organizations are advancing from calling while impersonating card delivery workers or post office couriers to delivering physical cards directly to mailboxes or handing them over in person. If the victim says they did not apply for the card, the criminal warns of “concerns about identity theft” and provides a fake card company customer service number, encouraging the victim to call.

Methods impersonating institutions such as the Prosecutor’s Office and the Financial Supervisory Service have shifted their targets from younger people with relatively fewer assets to middle-aged and elderly people with more assets. The proportion of victims aged 20 or younger in institution impersonation cases decreased from 75% in 2023 to 51%, while the proportion of those aged 50 and above increased from 15% to 35%.

A Police Agency official stated, “Criminal organizations exploit convenient financial service applications (apps) to identify victims’ asset status and persistently attempt crimes,” and urged, “If you receive a request from someone else asking for an authentication code, you must suspect a crime.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.