ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A spurt of scam artists fraudulently tapping into consumers', including credit union members, home equity lines of credit drew NCUA's first fraud alert for 2008.

The agency picked up on the crime where fraudsters get hold of publicly available information about CU member HELOCs and use different fraud approaches to gain access to the members HELOC accounts and draw them down through wire transfers.

The agency warned in particular about the sophistication of the fraud, which included the fraudsters being able to fool call center software by making it appear the call came from the CU member's home telephone number. In another case the criminal knew about recent transactions and other account activity.

“Credit union management should warn their member facing employees about this recent fraudulent activity,” NCUA wrote. “Management should ensure sufficient controls are in place to ensure the proper authentication of members. Management should also ensure their staff are properly trained in recognizing questionable activity on member accounts. Management should be aware there may be variants to the scam previously described (i.e. not just involving HELOC accounts).”