This seems to be becoming a bit of a thing…
When June Fearn was asked by the National Crime Agency to assist with its ‘investigation’, her selfless instinct was to agree.
‘I thought I have to help,’ says June, 74, a retired head teacher. ‘I was brought up to be polite, and helpful to the authorities who are there to protect us.’
But little did June know that her kindness would cost her £37,000. The ‘investigation’ she was asked to help with was bogus.
Her callers were not from the agency, but highly sophisticated scammers who preyed on her goodwill to drain her bank account. They convinced June, who lives in Portsmouth, to make ‘bait’ payments into an account to trap a criminal insider at her bank.
Okay, hands up anyone who thinks that any crime agency will call folk out of the blue and ask them to use their own money to trap a criminal? Anyone? No? Thought not.
They told her the agency would refund her, but she never saw her money again. So-called impersonation scams, where criminals pretend to be from the police or a victim’s bank, are rampant in the UK.
Because among all of the people hanging up on them, there will be a few gullible souls who fall for it, despite the request being outlandish and unreal.
No legitimate agency will call you on the off-chance and ask you to move money about. This has never happened and never will happen because they do not do this and they have always been clear about it – whether it is the National Crime Agency, your bank, the HMRC or any other organisation. No one but a scammer will call you and ask you to move money into a “safe” account, regardless of the story they have spun to convince you.
The scammers were terrifyingly convincing. ‘I asked them how I could be sure they were from the regulator,’ she says. ‘They told me to look at the number they had phoned me from and then to look at the number on the regulator’s website. They were the same.’
Then all I can say is that you are easily convinced. There is nothing remotely convincing about a cold call from a stranger asking you to move money about. Nothing. And they spoof their numbers. It’s been going on for a while now.
I despair, it really do.
Time and again these organisation say they do not phone, they do not e mail they do not text. If they need to approach you they do it by mail and they do not mention money. Except for HMRC of course.
‘I was brought up to be polite, and helpful to the authorities who are there to protect us.’
There’s her problem, I brought our children up to be polite but distrustful of the authorities.
Fools, money, parted, easily.
While that is true, I do find the attitude that they deserved to be so (as sometimes expressed on libertarian/Randian sites) a bit distasteful, especially the idea that it is almost a moral duty to defraud the credulous.
Given that it keeps happening despite the plethora of information out there, it becomes increasingly frustrating to see people still falling for what is an obvious scam. There comes a point when yes, calling them out for their foolishness is the only option left. Especially when they expect the banks to bail them out.
The people who hand over money seem to be either elderly (brought up in more trusting times) or in their 20s (brought up to give authority whatever it asks for maybe?).
Not sure it’s wholly fair to blame them. This is another crime the police aren’t interested in. BT will happily let scammers make tens of thousands of calls. Banks keep putting hurdles in the way of legit transactions but wave through obviously bogus ones.
The fact that scammers claim to be a.) from the authorities and b.) keen to help people should be a massive red flag. Maybe we can run an ad campaign around that?
The relevant organisations have said it time and time again. How much more do they need to say it? Anyone who falls for it only has themselves to blame. While I appreciate the point about the elderly, someone in their seventies is young enough to have been around when the these things started to become a thing. Certainly they have been around for a good ten to fifteen years to my knowledge. The young are supposedly Internet savvy where a quick search will tell you all you need to know about these scams. Quite apart from basic common sense and critical thinking.
My wife recently took one of those calls supposedly from the National Crime Agency. So obviously a scam that she’d put the phone down within about two seconds. Those “highly sophisticated scammers” are not at all sophisticated, they work on crude probabilities. Make enough calls and sooner or later someone will fall for it.
Intrusive and highly-publicised lockdown policing hasn’t helped I suspect. It could make a call from them seem slightly less unusual to the gullible.
Yup. They work on the principle of the vast majority hanging up. All it takes is one to fall for it for them to hit pay dirt. L Ron Hubbard operated a similar approach – for every hundred approaches, if one responds positively, you’ve had a successful day. He did alright out of it.
My late mother, who certainly still had most of her wits about her, would sometimes happily listen to telephone spammers even when I told her to hang up. “There might just be something in it.” It’s a good thing she never even attempted to master internet banking.
Criminals can be very ruthless in targeting people who are still capable of working internet banking, but who are teetering on the verge of senility.
My mother in law can be a bit naive and we have had to stop her falling for scams – usually stuff that comes through the post. However, she is in her nineties so there is an excuse there. My father is in his eighties and would never fall for anything like this as he is simply far too suspicious. It isn’t always about age.
My mum is eighty and she is onto them.
Horace Batchelor, from, spelled K, E, Y, N, S, H, A, M, Bristle, had a good scheme. Don’t think anybody complained, but he could not lose. Slightly more honest than the National Lottery.
But in those days you could buy X-Ray Spex, and Lucky Piskies, Saint Christopher medals, and wonderful body building schemes.
It always struck me at the time, even though I was but a naive youth, that if Horace Batchelor’s scheme was really any good, he’d be making for more money from operating it than just punting it on Radio Lux.
If its a woman trying to scam me I usually say do you take it up the arse or what colour knickers are you wearing today, or do you fancy some phone sex? they very quickly hang up. If its a bloke I just talk about the good old days when I was the chief executioner for Robert Mugabe.