please, if You received a distress text message or call from your friends or relatives asking for financial help , verify before you send the money especially if the account details and phone number is not that of your relatives or friend in questions.
what can we do, to avoid being a victim.
This is the message and that is also what we can do to avoid falling into the scam. This pattern of scamming has been on for long time but if you are careful then you will pick the red lines. One way you can get these red lines is to delay the process a little or stretch the conversation they will begin to be restive to continue.
Also you can get hold of the trick with the third party bank account details like you did. This is also the reason some businesses don't allow third party financial transaction especially if you are requesting to withdraw like in casinos and other online business transactions because they believe any thing is possible to happen to your account like being hacked, so if you are not requesting withdrawal to be received in your account registered with them you may need to go through longer process that is not the usual just to delay you and in the process verify. We have to be careful because scammers come in different ways.