Such a heartbreaking article from yesterday's Times

I thought it worth a mention, we all need to be so aware of the evil people who would dupe us if they could. The heading of the article "I'm 77, ill and live alone. Fraudsters diverted my calls and emptied my accounts"

I was so upset when I read this article. The woman described herself as the "perfect victim for any fraudster, elderly, chronically ill and disabled with a brain fraying at the edges and clueless about tech"

This is what happened:

flash on her mobile phone screen - £700 taken from account, message did you authorise Yes or No?

She went on to say she had genuine alerts from Barclays before, she clicked on N and so the scam began, by opening the door for a fraudster calling himself Arun to ring her. He lied that he was from the "level five security section of Barclays fraud dept. There is no such department, it was just his spiel.

"Your account has been compromised. Not just this £700 but also two attempts to set up standing orders. Your existing verification is not adequate. You need the added protection of level five security. You need to give me answers only you will know to his 12 questions" and she did. He then explained reaching this fictitious level five security would take hours to thoroughly secure her accounts and his next ruse was her undoing. "As this is highly sensitive information, I need to make sure no can listen to your telephone calls" He then instructed her to key in a mix of *21# on both phones, which she found out later a call divert mechanism, all incoming calls went to his burner phone, rendering her incommunicado by phone. In the meantime he/they emptied all her accounts. Armed to the hilt with all the information they needed they then bagged a loan from Barclays loans dept for £35,000. Not in her name but a "Mr Cavell Timoll-Gidd" They managed to do all that without her signature or knowledge.

She was aghast that Barclays didn't make any checks for fraud, especially as now, fraud is of epidemic proportions. As soon as she realised she had been scammed she rang Barclays who immediately froze her accounts and cards and blocked access online via the app. Although as she stated there was one department they seemed not to have blocked, namely its loan department. Meanwhile she is without funds to pay anyone or buy anything. After the incident she got a letter from Barclays to tell her how much her dds will cost per month to pay back the £35,000.

However there was a happy ending thank God! Barclays Fraud Dept cancelled the loan and told her that her money would be refunded, but what a horrible traumatising experience for this poor lady.

Impersonation scams are becoming more sophisticated and we need to be really alert to any requests such as this one.