I’m letting others know of this so no one else gets caught like we did. Our daughter and her family are living in New Zealand for two years. Yesterday I received a message from her saying she had a new phone and number. The message came via WhatsApp which is how we communicate for texts since she left this country. Anyway last night we had a message from her saying could we make a payment for her as her new phone wouldn’t let her make the payment. We thought this very strange but we made the payment as requested thinking that maybe there was a problem for her. It was difficult because as we were doing it, it turned out to be particularly difficult to make as the message ‘potential scam’ but my husband said that message sometimes comes up when it’s not a scam. Anyway we made the payment which was for over £1200 as she said it was for their rent and must be paid today. We are complete suckers aren’t we? How stupid of us. We then went to bed. A second request came but we ignored it, saying we’ll speak to our daughter in the morning. So this morning we video called her. She hasn’t changed her phone number, it was a scam. We had tried to ring her several times but the call was always rejected. Because our evening is the day time in New Zealand and our daughter was working yesterday as a doctor, we assumed she couldn’t take the calls as she was seeing patients. How stupid could we be! When we spoke to our daughter and son in law this morning (their evening) we discovered it was a scam. We immediately got on to our bank, and they are dealing with it, and the bank are recovering the money from the charging bank. We will not be out of pocket, and the bank are dealing with everything, including police. We were lucky, it could have been much worse.
Anyway, that is a common scam according to our bank. So if you get a WhatsApp message from from your son/daughter saying they’ve changed their phone and number, and then later asking for money, please check with your adult child that they have actually changed their phone number and do not transfer any money until you have actually spoken to your child. The scammers will not answer your calls, your child will.
