Who's calling?

Not all cases of identity theft have to do with credit cards or other financial matters. Apparently an individual involved with credit unions has been making calls to credit unions in which he identifies himself on the phone as Mike Welch, publisher of Credit Union Times. One such call was made to a corporate credit union seeking information supposedly for a story “I” was working on. The person who received the call, from a 614 area code, was sharp enough to realize that the publisher of Credit Union Times is not a reporter and thus would not be making calls to supposedly put together a news story. Thankfully he called to tip me off. Why would anyone want to pose as someone from another publication? We can only speculate. Our best guess is that the unethical individual in question was a reporter or correspondent from another credit union publication. For whatever reason he may have been having difficulty getting through to credit unions to obtain information when using his real name and that of the publication for which he worked. Who knows? To repeat an earlier admonition in this space several months ago, credit union representatives need to know for sure to whom they are speaking before divulging any information no matter how innocent sounding questions may appear to be. If someone ID’s themselves as being connected with Credit Union Times, with only rare exceptions, you’ll find their name listed on the masthead which appears on page 14 in every weekly issue. -