Received a telephone call from someone claiming to be calling from my banks Fraud department, saying they have put on hold two suspicious payments - they told me name of company and amounts. I confirmed that I had not nor ever made any such payments. The call went on saying that the Fraud department was close to making arrests in this and other similar matters and asked if I was willing to assist in this.
Obviously, I said 'Of course', but this call went on an on, got me transfer money from my savings account to my current account (just to check that no strange messages appeared ) they did not. As I got more and more suspicious the caller gave the name of the policeman on this case, and even gave me a phone number to ring on another phone. That call was answered ......'my banks' fraud department, and when I asked to be put through to this policeman, I was transferred to someone claiming to be that PC. The caller kept on and on asking me if I was willing to assist with their investigations, to which I always replied, 'of course'. They did not ask me for any pin numbers or account numbers. Then.......obviously drawing it a close, he told me to transfer that same amount I had transferred from my savings account to my current account to a person, he had named earlier, who was in charge of the fraud department. At that point I said 'NO'.
Caller was most surprised (after all he had played me very carefully and slowly over the previous 60 minutes and I had one everything he told me to do). He repeated that if I did not do this they would put into my account a note saying I had refused to have those other payments blocked. When I pointed out this was not what I was saying, just got it repeated either to send that money to that person (Hannah Brownn), or they would not be able to keep that block going. 'No way', I said am I making any payment to someone whom I do not know'
Finally, I realised how I been played and rung off. Felt very stupid that I had let it go that far, even checking at his request that no-one had stolen my passport (which he said had been used as ID at the bank). and various other things.
I reported it to My banks real and genuine Fraud department, and even they were rather taken aback at how very clever and involved this had been. I gave them the telephone number which I had been told to ring - not sure if that is of any help, I tried to ring it again, and it came back more or less as unavailable.
So I feel I ought to pass this on. I am a very suspicious person, and kept saying I was uneasy with the call, but was so carefully reassured and even the fact they had that had this other 0800 telephone number ready to give to me to ring when I got suspicious says how elaborate it all was.
Thank goodness, my own good sense won out in the end, so no harm done. But it was a very close thing,
