Nothing new to most of us naturally.
But I wonder if said lawyer trusted a googled result for contact number, rather a number on back of the cards or official website. And struck one of the paid adverts for the 'number' for the 'fraud department' ranked in google, before he was called back from these 'sophisticated scammers'
(or called one based on an email or TXT to kick it off and that was left out...)
Sounds like it falls into the bucket that has been popular for most of this year done by those means.
That or it's as well coincidental as the NZTA ones currently. But being hold hold for 30mins sounds odd. (although I've not called recently)
Previously when I had, it was ring the normal banking number. Go through the ordeal of identifying yourself before pushing the help hotkey and got someone pretty quickly.

