South African financial institutions and municipalities are reporting a sharp increase in sophisticated impersonation scams, with fraudsters using manipulated caller IDs, AI-generated voices, and deceptive messaging to trick individuals into divul sensitive personal and banking information.
According to a BusinessTech report, Nedbank, Standard Bank, and the City of Cape Town have all issued urgent warnings about these scams, which often involve criminals posing as trusted officials to exploit customer fear and urgency. The use of spoofing technology to mimic legitimate contact details has made these schemes increasingly difficult to detect.
Nedbank recently alerted clients that fraudsters are registering their numbers under labels like Nedbank Investigations to appear genuine. The scammers typically claim there has been suspicious activity on an account and urge customers to change their login credentials to ones the fraudsters provide or to share one-time passwords OTPs.