Nope

It’s not new at all.

A scam victim lost his elderly parents’ life savings when an ‘evil’ crook pretended to be a Scotland Yard police detective in a sickening new con.

Semi-retired Jonathan Byrne, 63, has barely slept and says he feels sick to his stomach after being duped into handing over nearly £25,000.

The sophisticated con saw scammers posing as ‘articulate Detective Lee Mason from Holborn police station’, who spoke with a city banker accent, and a member of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

The marathon phone call lasted nearly four hours during which Mr Byrne was ‘hypnotised’ into transferring large sums of cash.

It’s just a slight variation on the old ‘transfer your money’ con.

The scam began at 4pm on September 10 when the former COO of a professional engineering institution received a call from a withheld number.

Scammers convinced him to believe he was being contacted by Detective Lee Mason from Holborn police station who told him a ‘Sarah Wiggins’ had been arrested that morning.

He was told officers had found his and 20 other people’s financial records in a notebook she owned.

Mr Byrne instantly searched Google for the station’s phone number and asked to ring back, but he was told he was being called from the fraud department who do not accept incoming calls.

Red flag, right there. Any real serving officer would have agreed to the call back. If they won’t, they aren’t real. And, even if that doesn’t cause concern, the minute they ask you to transfer money, it’s a scam. No one – absolutely no one – will call and ask you to move money about. No one.

13 Comments

  1. The government just love taking personal responsibility away from the proles. An infantilised population is so much easier to control and exploit.

  2. Hence the desire to ensure as few people as possible get a decent education . “CO2 helps plants grow” Racist! Bigot! Far right climate denier! Go to Lord Ed’s rightthink lessons for the next 10 years!

  3. Apparently this imbecile was “the former COO of a professional engineering
    institution”

    I assume that means chief operating officer, which, according to go-ogle font of all knowledge: is an executive in charge of the daily operations of an organization (i.e. personnel, resources, and logistics). COOs are usually second-in-command immediately after the CEO, and report directly to them, acting on their behalf in their absence.

    So the institute of chartered fuckwits has a vacancy then!!

    Sorry, but for fucks sake!!!

  4. I never answer calls from an unknown number. If someone wants to talk to me, they can leave a message and I’ll call them back if I want to talk to them. I block numbers that repeatedly call without leaving a message.
    I delete unsolicited texts and emails.

  5. Since buying a ‘call blocker’ a month ago, my unwanted calls have halved and are reducing day-by-day. Fifty-six blocked so far.

  6. No longer have a landline so the dodgy Indian accented calls from Kevin/Harry have ended, wifey always gave them short shrift anyway.

    I never receive malicious or scam calls on my own mobile, but i also have a company issued phone (crap smartphone never use it for calls, the previous ancient Nokia dumbphone was superb), the company never call me on it they know my feelings about the garbage but probably once a week there will be (unanswered) calls from numbers which if i can be arsed to google them have been reported as likely scams.

    This new compulsory refund system feels like its open to fraud itself via organised criminals, will we see ‘calls for cash’ scams from the usual suspect ‘crash for cash’ tossers.

  7. “This new compulsory refund system feels like its open to fraud itself…”

    Yep, draw a ton of money out of your account, claim that you’ve been a victim of a scam, claim your money back.

    An additional problem will be that banks will be making the rest of us jump through endless hoops every time we want to legitimately spend our hard earned cash in order to protect themselves.

  8. What in the world is a “city banker accent”?

    Like a police accent, perhaps, but a bit more estuary? Or are these people so ignorant that they think bankers are posh?

    A mystery.

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