Citadele Bank

What to do if you have received an SMS claiming to be from Citadele with a fraudulent link

Published on

  1. If you have received an SMS claiming to be from Citadele and have not opened the link, you have acted correctly and have not become a victim of fraud.
  2. If you have received an SMS claiming to be from Citadele, have opened the link, but did not enter your personal information, then you have also avoided becoming a victim of fraud.
  3. If you have received an SMS claiming to be from Citadele, have opened the link, and have entered you personal information, call us immediately or go to your nearest Citadele branch in order to make necessary changes to your online banking contract.
  4. If you have received an SMS claiming to be from Citadele, have opened the link, have entered you personal information, and scammers have made a payment, call us immediately or go to your nearest branch. In this case, the bank will also contact you by phone as soon as possible to agree upon the most convenient way to change your online bank login data.

We have discovered that, on the evening of January 2nd, scammers began sending SMS messages claiming to be from Citadele to clients of both Citadele and other banks. We request that you under no account open the link sent or enter your personal information; we also ask that you always ensure that the online banking address is correct before you enter your information: online.citadele.lv.

We remind you that the bank never sends this type of SMS and never asks its clients to enter their name, password, code or other personal information.

Currently, Citadele has mobilised all available resources and is taking all actions necessary to ensure that these fraudulent sites are closed down as quickly as possible. We have already shut down several sites, however, scammers are creative and continue to create new ones.

Citadele is doing everything possible to inform its clients of the need to ignore these requests.

We cooperate closely with CERT, the Information Technology Security Incident Response Institution of the Republic of Latvia, to identify the country of origin of these scammers. The Bank is collaborating with the Institution to shut down fraudulent internet sites. In addition, the Bank is collaborating with mobile operators to block the sending of fraudulent SMS messages.

Examples of fraudulent SMS messages