scammed out of £525.000

I too still use cheques to give to charities.
Scammers wouldn’t get much from me because I haven’t got much money anyway.

I've just had the nat west scam, telling me there was fraudulent transactions on my account, luckily my phone identifies possible scam or fraudulent phone numbers. I told them.their number was flagged as scam, and they told me to log into.my account to check the number when i said i would do so they hung up?
I rang the bank to check and it was indeed a scam, luckily they confirmed there were no fraudulent transactions on my account.

grannybuy

I still use a cheque book to make charity donations, and post them. I don’t want to give credit card details in writing on the forms they send out, or online. The less people that have these details the better.

Charities now have to pay 40p for every cheque passing through their accounts, a charge on every transaction as well as a monthly charge for having an account with their bank.

It really is disgraceful for banks to make money from charities when they are making such huge profits, some higher than ever.
Barclays were one of the first to introduce these charges.
Annual pretax profit reached 8.4 billion pounds, the highest on record. Shares in Barclays rose as much as 3.8% in early trading. Chief Executive Officer C.S.23 Feb 2022

I'm surprised there hasn't been more of an outcry over this.

I don’t make cash donations to charities - I donate clothes, books, etc. which I no longer use instead. So it’s a win/win - I declutter my home, the charity makes money from the sales and everything is recycled. ?

Coco51

It’s not as if there are no warnings an information. My sympathy is limited. What makes me so mad that if you are a victim of criminal fraud by family members who are executors of a will, the police don’t want to know. It is a position in which you are more vulnerable than victims of scams and the only redress you can get is having a spare £35k to personally do the job that the police are supposed to do to protect you.

It may be a civil matter over which the police have no jurisdiction - breach of trust. You may see it as fraud, but legally it may not be.

I've watched some of those love or money BBC programmes - awful and sad to see women and men being taken in by scammers. good programme. hopefully will be a warning not to send money to strangers - even if they are promising to marry you!! and check with family or banks if anyone asks for your money.

there is no reason for people to be smug and victim-blaming, but it still goes on, as seen here.

It’s unfortunate that the charities are charged for cheques, but they are still gaining money.

I am not smug, I am well aware that I could be scammed, if a new, clever unknown scam started and I was caught before it was publicised. But many people who are scammed should have known better. They have no excuse for being so gullible. This doesn't stop me being deeply sorry for them when they suffer. But if I do something stupid I accept that it is my own fault.

Nearly all the scams people fall for are common well publicised ones. Some have been known and warned about for years, even a decade or so. They are well pubicised in newspapers, on line, on comsumer and other programmes on the radio or television.

It is up to each individual to take sensible precautions to protect themselves in life, whether it is making sure they have house insurance and locking their doors every time they leave the house or of being aware of all the common scams around.

Putting the phone down on cold calls, or checking independently on anyone who says they are ringing from your bank/the police etc., is basic common sense. If the phone call is genuine they will understand your concerns.

Obviously if people have cognitive problems or there is other reasons for them being particularly vulnerable to these scams, the situation is different. But, not many people have that excuse.

Watching this now. The bank did everything they could to warn her, speaking to her in branch and in person, writing warning letters to her, and even arranging for the police to speak to her not once but twice!
The programme says that she got £98,000 back. Fair enough if that was recovered from the scammers. However it would be very annoying if that £98,000 came from the bank itself rather than the scammers, because ultimately the bank’s other customers, ie us, would be paying for it.
I still can’t understand why she didn’t explain what she thought was happening to the police, when they spoke to, twice! Or why didn’t she phone the bank’s national phone number.
It sounds like she thought she was Miss Marple or Jessica Fletcher from Murder She Wrote.

I absolutely agree MOnica and ShropshireMiss. Unless someone isn’t ‘the full shilling’ why should the bank refund them if they have fallen for a well publicised scam?

I was scammed last week. I rceived a text saying "Simon tried to deliver a parcel please contact" there was a link, which I did follow. The link appeared to take me to the Royal mail site. It said that they had stopped leaving cards and to pay
£1.30 for redilivery which I did, using a credit card.
Then a little later thinking about a day later I decided,
a) it was odd that a Christian name was used.
b)The Royal Mail had stopped leaving cards
c)Also I couldn't remember which credit card I had used.
I then had to call all the cc card companies and check the balances any payments gone through. which involved cancelling the cards,and having new ones sent. Having done all this, I then received a call from someone purporting to be from one of the card companies saying that someone had tried to change my email address, asked a few questions, I very quickly realized this was one of the scammers. I said that I would ring him back. I rang the bank and got through to the fraud department, who said I had done the right thing.
These fraudsters want to harvest your credit card details and sell them on. So, that means that many months later you might see a large unexpected payment.
All the credit card companirs I spoke to had heard of this post office scam.
I hope my story helps you to avoid this scam

Oh dear, there was a thread about this just last week, Claudiaclaws

Simon is very busy, he tries to deliver all over the country.
He even tried to deliver a parcel to our postman who was out - delivering parcels!

Ooh ello.
I've had that one, too!

www.gransnet.com/forums/scams_and_fraud/a1309893-Post-Office-Scam

Well, he is a busy boy..

So have I.

Blimey Claudia, how many cards have you got?

Sometimes I wonder at the banks and their security criteria.

One day I made two payments to companies in the USA using a debit card. They were for hundreds of dollers each and went through without a problem.

Later that day I ordered $30 of goods from Tesco for a routine online shop and the bank inisted upon 2 layer authentification.

I never use it except to find where I left my mobile, so anyone phoning me on my landline is a scammer. I moved 6 years ago but took my number with me as I only moved a few streets away. So the scammers must have got the landline number from an elderly BT phone book as I haven’t been in it for some years. Most of the time it depends on how I’m feeling, so I can be nice or nasty to scammers. But the Very Worse was when I told the scammer I was sorry but Mummy died 2 days ago. A few days later I got a phone call saying that they were trying to find a xxxxxx. Xxxxxx ( my name ) as her mother still hadn’t repaid the £800 she’d borrowed and they just couldn’t ever get to speak to her. Knowing it was a scam I was in a bad mood so just told them Scammers get short shrift as I was 95 and my mother had died over 20 yrs ago. A lie but it just goes to show you should Never give info ( even untrue info ) to strangers who phone you I also said that if they called round to my address they might be in luck if my sister Susan was in as she was more gullible than me…………… I don’t know the people who moved into my old place but don’t like to ask them if they had someone asking for my sister Susan( who is a figment of my imagination!!!! )

They don’t resort to phone books Mallin. If they know your name and number it’s because they’ve harvested details that you’ve entered when shopping online. If they don’t know your name they are simply dialling random numbers. We have been ex-directory for many years but scammers call and address me as Mrs GSM. We only use a landline here as we don’t have mobile reception. BT Call Protect, which enables you to block the last number to call you, has really cut down on the number of scam calls we get.

There seems to be more and more scams these days. I am totally sick of all the fake phone calls and emails and just hang up now if there is a gap between picking up the phone and a response. It has got so I just snap at people and sometimes they are friends who are slow to respond . They all understand exactly.

Mallin
Could you explain how the scamming offices in Nigeria and Russia ( mainly) got their hands on these telephone books?

When an unknown number rings, I pick up the phone and say nothing for about 5 seconds. If it is a scam, you will here a slight click as the automatic dialling system in the scammers office records 'no response' and moves on to dialling the next number.

If the call is genuine, the caller will usually speak, or after about 5 seconds, if i do not hear the click, I will speak.

I do this because we have an answerphone will cut in and the callsystem records our number as being active and worth ringing again

‘Unreasonable Gullableness’? I think it is very cruel to blame the victim of any crime. The victims have done nothing wrong whatsoever. Scammers are very clever at doing what they do. The fault lies entirely with the perpetrator. Most people are taken in by a good Magician. We don’t accuse them of having no common sense, we praise the Magician. Same thing surely? In both cases we have been deceived!