Fraud.A warning.Please read.

I only use PayPal now for online purchases. If they don't take PayPal I don't buy from them.

My PayPal account was used to try to buy a ridiculously expensive pair of designer trainers and an even more expensive pair of socks. Yes, socks I spotted it, and prevented it.

None of us are immune. None of us.

A doctor friend was recently scammed out of £20000, and if a smart doctor can be scammed anyone can. I am always getting scam calls mainly of the sort which tells me there is something wrong with my computer and they will help fix it. When I lie that I have no computer they put the phone down.

Does anyone remember all those emails we used to get purporting to come from some foreign bank which had a large amount of money in an account where the dead owner had a similar surname to yours? They had identified you as next of kin and entitled to it. All you had to do was answer the email with your bank details and they would transfer the money. Some hopes!

So sorry to hear you were scammed. ☹️I hope you get your money back.
We used to receive lots of suspicious calls on our landline, so we cancelled the service last time we changed our broadband provider.
We don’t receive many similar calls on our mobiles.

Firstly, I would say, go into the settings on your credit card and set the limit to the lowest amount you can manage with. I have mine set at £1000. I did this after being scammed twice with my Barclaycard, once for £4000 for flights to Frankfurt, another time for £2000 for a set of fancy tyres. Barclaycard told me the card number and 3-digit code would have been sold on by telephone sales people in companies where I had used it to buy stuff online. I only use PayPal now for online purchases. If they don't take PayPal I don't buy from them. I did ask Barclaycard why they didn't inform the police, after all they must have the names and addresses of where the tyres were sent and who bought the airline tickets, but they said it would be impossible for the police to investigate, the number of daily frauds is so high.

Cards do still have limits on them. The bank issuing the card assesses your credit worthiness and sets the card accordingly. Different if you give someone your bank account details eg account number, sort code. Your account can be emptied by anyone with that info. Some banks do have additional security if you are on-line banking.

OnwardandUpward you should never assume that you are immune. That in itself makes you vulnerable.

I might add to my pp that the actual financial adviser of someone we know, transferred a lot of that person’s money into a completely new account. This was after a sole email asking him to do it, giving details, and saying not to bother emailing or phoning him to check, since he was going to be on holiday and out of contact.

Of course it was a scam - his email had been hacked.
He did get the money back eventually, presumably through the clueless FA’s insurance.

After hearing this, dh contacted our investment bod to ask about their precautions. Ours said that in that sort of case there would be no less than 6 separate checks to make sure it was on the level - and if we were out of contact it certainly wouldn’t happen until we were.

I’m sorry you were scammed but 999 is an emergency number, probably in the heat of the moment you didn’t think that a detective would ask you to ring the emergency number. The moral of the story for us all really is never to use the link or number provided and independently call the bank and local police, no matter how plausible it sounds.

"nobody is immune from professional criminals with a good story."

Yes we are BUT only if we are wise and one step ahead.

If you phone up to pay a bill they will make you verify you are who you say you are, so how much more important it is to make sure we also do the same!

Remember, there is no rush. If someone is asking you to do something, take their details and say you will ring them back later. Research it, talk to people, google it. There is nothing on this earth that needs your instant response. Don't rush into anything or take anything at face value.

Sorry to hear this I hope you get your money back,the culprits won't be found of course. Thank you for alerting us all to it. I have read it out to DD as he was scammed a few weeks ago.
Only listening to what he was saying alerted me and I had read something on Grans Net and he stopped. They said they were from the bank and could he account for three large purchases that had gone out of our account, then read them out when he said no they said as they were the bank they could sort it out if he gave details when he started to say his name I mouthed at him scam and he put the phone down. Only to be phoned later by the same gang to ask why he had put the phone down when they were our bank. Luckily between the phone calls, he had got through to our bank and they said it was a scam.
I have had the same one twice. It starts with an email from someone you rarely contact but are on your email list. They ask if you are O.K. and say they are not but would you do them a favour and email back. When you email back you are asked to buy Amazon vouchers for a relation as they are too ill to do so.
The first time it happened it was a cousins husband so I phoned her to see what was wrong of course there was nothing but she did tell me to be careful as quite a lot of their friends had been contacted for the same reason. the second was a distant reli in Canada.
Thanks again for warning everyone you must be frantic.

It was still fashionable to send e-mails, when I got one from my friend saying she needed me to wire her money since she was stranded in Rome... only... she had just left my house, and I went outsiode and called her back to see the e-mail for herself.

I think the best thing you can do to protect yourself from scams is to buy a ‘call blocker’ landline phone. I used to get two or three attempted scam calls a day, mainly of the “we’ve detected a problem with your computer” variety. I put the phone down immediately but it was a nuisance. I bought a call blocker phone 3 years ago and have not had one scam call since. The one I got was a BT one but other companies do them. You put all your contacts into its address book and only calls from those numbers will automatically be put through to you. If anyone phones from a number not in your address book, the phone asks them who they are, then it asks you if you want to take the call. Scammers always hang up at this stage. If it’s a genuine caller (say it’s a hospital wanting to change your appointment) they will just say that and you can push a button to take the call. The one I got had a facility to ‘sync’ with the contacts list on both my and my husband’s iPhone so it literally took seconds to transfer all our contacts into the phone’s address book. I know this only helps with land lines, not mobiles but personally I’ve never had a scam call on my mobile - it was always the land line. I feel that that phone is one of the best things I’ve ever bought.

So sorry bbj. It could and does happen to lots of people. I've been lucky, almost caught but not quite.
And it does happen on house phones. In fact, I have only had this kind of call on my house phone, not my mobile.
I fervently hope you get your money back.

I have a complicated scam.
This happened on our joint account.

My husband first started getting texts from people he didn’t know. Then a few days later, his phone just stopped working out of the blue. He rang his mobile provider and asked them what had happened? They said that he had already spoke to them and changed his number! He hadn’t.

Then, our landline rang and it was our bank asking him to ring.
The bank had ‘flagged up’ suspicious activity on our account where someone had tried to take £5000. All we knew was that the scammer lived in Wales.

The bank froze our account on withdrawals (but not direct debits) for a time while they sorted it out.

Now we consider ourselves to be very vigilant when it comes to being scammed and are always suspicious when we answer any unknown caller on the phone or emails, but this really shocked us on what these scammers can do.
Now, I don’t keep any money in our current account that we think is not going to be used in the near future and buy premium bonds with it!

That's awful for you, these fraudsters are very, very clever. I'm constantly getting the Post Office one about a parcel they had tried to deliver. The WhatsApp one was on our local news last week because a lady had been scammed out of a lot of money. Thanks for letting us know of another one doing the rounds and I hope something can be done to help you get your money back.

blubber Its absolutely disgusting, you were switched on there, well done.

I know how it unnerving it is, but we can breath a sigh of relief in the knowledge that the scammers got zilch from us. Goodness knows what people are going though who have actually had money stolen.

Shocking.

I have also had the “hi mum” text, with phone supposedly knocked into the sink. I contacted both my kids on their mobiles to see if it was them, and it wasn’t, so deleted the message without responding. You don’t want them to know you are a real person, so don’t reply. It’s sad, but you can’t take any of these things at face value. The number of times I have been supposedly being investigated for tax fraud! If they don’t address you by name, though, that is a real giveaway.
My DH was once phoned by his bank to ask about the quality of their service and he refused to answer their security questions as it was them that had called him, rather than the other way around, and then went to the bank and found out it was genuine, but the cashier agreed he had done the right thing. It’s a problem, though, with so many bank branches having closed down that it is no longer a simple matter of popping down to the branch to speak to someone if you have a query.

Busybeejay
We are behind you in support of this, its absolutely disgusting and i know how upset you are.

These flowers won't help 1 jot but i send you them and a hug too.

(())

I had a similar call but instead of dialling 999 as requested I rang the local police to report it. (having first made a call to a family member to make sure the line was free)

Yes GrammaH, it was when the 'scammer' used various words that the warning bell began to ring.

Thank goodness you were 'switched on' too.

Busybeejay if your bank don't refund your money please talk to the Financial Ombudsmans office. They are very helpful and you can do it all over the phone. Please let us know how things go. Don't feel daft - scammers are becoming more and more sophisticated and it is very easy to get tricked.

serendipity it's funny you should say that about the "hi mum this is my new phone number" as I had one the other day exactly the same. Fortunately, the wording didn't sound like the kind of thing either of my 2 AC would use so I deleted and blocked the number. Very glad I did. So sorry you got involved in an exchange with the scammer.

My friend was scammed over the phone. She lost over £9,000
Luckily the bank reimbursed her
Hopefully you will have same luck xx

If you think a call is a scam and has blocked your line call family/friend first to check line is clear

Busybeejay. I think it will all depend on how you transferred the amount.

However have a look a CAB website. They say that:
Most banks should reimburse you if you’ve transferred money to someone because of a scam. This type of scam is known as an ‘authorised push payment’.

www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/scams/check-if-you-can-get-your-money-back-after-a-scam/#:~:text=Contact%20your%20bank%20immediately%20to,someone%20because%20of%20a%20scam.&text=If%20you%20can't%20get,the%20bank's%20official%20complaints%20process.

Good to see so much support for you here on the thread at such a worrying and stressful time.