CUNA Mutual Group issued an alert this week regarding anationwide wave of fraud that originated from home equity lines ofcredit and requests wire transfers be sent to construction companyaccounts.

After mortgages are filed and become public record,cybercriminals scraped data from the public documents to learnwhere members had HELOC accounts from which they can steal, according to the riskalert.

Recent frauds have been conducted by requesting wire transfersbe sent to accounts in the name of construction companies to makeit look like advances for home improvement projects, CUNA Mutual said.

In some cases, the companies are legitimate and are used as“money mules,” the alert said.

CUNA Mutual said the fraud incidents featured a number of commontraits. Fraudsters contacted credit unions directly to changemember profile information, including addresses, phone numbers oremail accounts.

In some cases, online accounts were taken over entirely,allowing the fraudsters to manipulate members' online bankingservices. Once this occurred, they changed profile information ortransferred funds from the HELOC into a share draft account,reducing the chance that a credit union employee would noticesuspicious activity, CUNA Mutual said.

Other signs included wire requests received by fax withaccurately forged signatures, which the fraudsters find on theHELOC documents they search out online, the alert said.

In some instances, member phone numbers were call-forwarded bythe criminals or callbacks by the credit union were forwarded tothe criminals, CUNA Mutual said.

In addition, crooks can build a profile of member informationfrom what they can gather on a member through online sources, whichenables the criminal to verify information if asked by a creditunion employee.