A South Carolina credit union is taking what legal experts sayis a rare legal approach to combat phishing by filing a civillawsuit and winning a court order to serve subpoenas on Internetservice providers and phone companies related to the case withoutwaiting for a pretrial conference.

The $687 million AllSouth FCU in Columbia, S.C., filed a civillawsuit last month in U.S. ­District Court for the District ofSouth ­Carolina against unknown perpetrators that gained access toat least 125 members' accounts, ­according to court documents.

The lawsuit charged unnamed defendants with infringing uponAllSouth's trademark and violating the Racketeer Influenced andCorrupt Organizations Act.

The credit union, which has more than 20 locations and 100,000members, is seeking an immediate injunction against the fraudstersand triple damages, which are mandatory under RICO statutes.

In effort to identify and locate criminals who launched a SMSphishing scam in early April, a U.S. District Court judge hasissued an order granting expedited discovery, allowing AllSouth'slegal team to serve subpoenas on third-party communicationproviders.

 Unlike a criminal case, a civil lawsuit allowsdifferent methods of discovering evidence, which is likely whyAllSouth has adopted the tactic. AllSouth officials ­declined tocomment, citing the ongoing investigation.

According to court records, the fraudsters sent phishing text­messages by obtaining a list of AT&T customer names with SouthCarolina's 803 area code. Recipients were told their account hadlimited access or restricted access and were instructed to call a­toll-free telephone number.

Callers were greeted with an ­automated recording stating,“Welcome to AllSouth Federal Credit Union,” and prompted to providepersonal information such as account, Social Security and driver'slicense numbers, which perpetrators used to log on to AllSouth'sonline banking system and transfer money out of victims'accounts.

The exact number of victims is yet to be determined, but atleast 125 credit union members reported to AllSouth that theyrevealed personal data during the phishing scam, according to courtdocuments.

It's rare for judges in civil cases to grant an expediteddiscovery order to issue subpoenas to third-party serviceproviders, according to legal experts, but this is not the firsttime a financial institution has ­utilized the tactic in a phishingcase.

Records of communications providers are given extra protectionby the Stored Communications Act portion of the ElectronicCommunications Privacy Act of 1986, but the laws have gotten murkywith increasing technology such as social media and cloudstorage.

“It's my impression that civil discovery requests to third-partyservice providers for the content of communication  underthe Electronic Communications Privacy Act are very unusual and maynot be allowed by the statute,” Chris Calabrese, legislativecounsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in email toCredit Union Times.