I've just witnessed a scam and can't believe it!

We were scammed two and a half weeks ago. We wanted to sell our timeshare. We went all the way to Stratford-upon-Avon, happily thinking our problem was solved. To cut a long story short, we ended up paying them £1000 deposit for their "services". I felt uneasy afterwards so googled the company, which had a different name from the one we thought we were seeing. Scam! We cancelled under the 14 day cooling off period. They confirmed by email that we had cancelled. We followed up with a phone call and the promised to return our money. It's seventeen days now and not a penny back. Luckily we paid by MasterCard and they are working on reimbursing us. We are far from stupid, but it's so easy to be conned. After five hours of being bombarded by them we were worn down. You can ask how people get conned and the answer is easily!

My neighbour received a phone call from "bank". She gave out her pin number over the phone and and consequently had her account cleared out. She wasn't elderly or vulnerable. When she started to tell me, I stopped her to say, "Banks don't ask for your pin, this is a scam. Please tell me you didn't give out your pin". Her reply, "But he sounded a nice young man!"

Well at least you tried. Well done! Very difficult to interfere when it is nothing to do with you personally so I admire you for that.

Poor man, he must have felt humiliated and no wonder he was angry with these horrible people calling him all the time. I hope they were not holding anyone as hostage or anything dramatic like that. Very frightening for him.

I think the PO should have asked this man to come in to a side room, called the police and left it to them.

It's interesting that the gentleman mentioned TalkTalk. A supposed "representative" of TalkTalk rang our landline last week. My husband answered - it was something about unauthorised activity on our broadband, which struck DH and I as odd. (We're both computer geeks and have taken many courses over the years.) He started quizzing the man and he said he couldn't tell who or why this had supposedly happened... unless he had our passwords, etc. Oh, sure! Hubs told him he believed it was a scam, man insisted it was not, said he would get his "technician" to phone us the next day. End of call. Meanwhile, hubs called TalkTalk to confirm it was a scam. They hadn't heard about this one before, but agreed that he was attempting to gain access to our broadband. She said they would send a letter if there was a problem and would never ask for information. "Technician" did phone back and hubs told him off! I just suspect scammers are trying to take advantage of the bad press TalkTalk had in 2015.

I've had many scam calls and mail my solution to mail asking for a handling fee to send me out a large check was to send a message back in an unstamped envelope requesting they take the handling fee out of my winnings.The scammers apparently have a sucker list which contains the names addresses and phone numbers of people who have already been successfully scammed marking them as an easy target.

Good on you Solitaire for trying to help this gentleman, and we can only hope the bank staff are as on-the-ball as you. It infuriates me just how many of these heartless b******s spend their days scamming people and the horror stories of people losing everything they've worked for to cons. My nan, who had dementia, fell for those lottery scams and wouldn't listen to us, the police or anyone as she was convinced she was right and would win. We tried stopping the mail but some still got through; we told carers and neighbours not to post letters but to save them for us to check first (didn't help that carers turned out to be thieves too!) And these 'love' scams are even more cruel in many ways as they screw with the emotions of vulnerable people and are adept at knowing which cons work best for each person they are getting money from. Thank goodness there are people like Solitaire that are willing to at least try and prevent people becoming victims and that the police now have some dedicated officers dealing with these sorts of crimes. Sad to share a world with people that think it's OK to prey on others. We've had a couple of calls here that start with 'problem on your computer' or similar - I've resorted to saying f**k off before slammming the phone down - only 1 ever rang a second time and I was even ruder to that prick! Guess they aren't to know my better half was a networks engineer for years and could deal with any computer problems ;)

Lorelei I usually just click the phone off, but once in a while if I am caught getting out of the bath, or changing my DGD's nappy, I have said F**k Off. Also I was struggling with my brother's death in America last spring and had a lot of landline calls from Florida, so my nerves were a bit stretched. I did get a retort of F**k You, too once. Made me laugh that, I needed the comic relief then.

Sometimes I give a good panto chant when they say they are so and so from BT or whatever... I say very loudly OH NO YOU'RE NOT!

Some of this is quite generational and I believe some of the people attacked (because it is an attack) are in the early stages of dementia. My mother fell prey to a "you have won" completion before we were aware there was anything wrong with her cognitive ability. Eventually the bank would not let her borrow any more - I think they did this at a much earlier stage than they had to.

A neighbour found her in tears and eventually I got to know. The neighbour phoned my brother (in America) who was sworn not to tell me; he phone his daughter (in the UK) who phoned my daughter and they both said they would not have any nonsense about not telling me and did so. Eventually we went to the bank with Mum and I believe they were very aware of what was going on - recognising the name of the company the cheques were made out to. Mum was very happy to let me try and sort it out after that but still wanted to reply to the "you have won" letters.

I wrote some legally sounding letters saying I would take them to court for preying on a vulnerable adult (mum never saw those) and the letters stopped for quite a while. I reckon she was hundreds if not thousands of pounds out of pocket. She was happy to give me and my daughter POA so I have been looking after her money ever since, paying all the bills etc., and sometime after that we got a diagnosis of dementia.

The letters did start up again and mum - no longer with access to a cheque book - was stuffing money in the envelopes and asking her mobile hairdresser and carers to post them. Luckily I go very frequently and they all felt able to let me know but, of course, they were in a very awkward position and it all took very careful handling. I had to make the decision to redirect mum's mail in the end, which s - probably one of the worst things I have had to do as she loved the post coming and the family sends her lots of postcards to keep in touch. The redirect letters from these companies have tailed off presumable because of a lack of response.

A couple of years ago when mum could reason more I asked her if she knew that x, y and z all thought these were scams. She said yes, she did. What is it that convinces you to reply was my next question. Because they are in black and white came the reply. Again, I believe, a generation acceptance that those in authority (printed letter) are right.

I feel so sad about the gentleman in the OP. The best hope is that the bank will intervene as I doubt he will be able not to believe it now he has bought into it.

I should have said well done Solitaire - not everyone would try to help and it may have sunk in because there were a few of you saying it.

We ordered a take away over the telephone about 20 minutes later Nationwide B S. Phoned to tell us that our card had been 'Compromised' Someone had tried to use the card details in HONG KONG. We later found out that when we placed our order the guy who owned the shop repeated out loud the card numbers and one of his staff had text the numbers to someone in HONG KONG.

Cali I've had the same one but with them pretending to be BT ( my account is with BT) it was the same script and voice as the 'Microsoft ' scam, so I told them I knew they were a scam and to b---- off!

Well done Solitaire, I hope the gentleman got help from the Bank, and he didnt fall for that scam. Its dreadful how people are so vunerable these days.

We have a CPR call blocker which enables you to cut out a lot of calls, could be useful for people trying to help an elderly or confused person. Like the idea of redirecting the mail.

My mother had similar scam. She had written a cheque for £1000 for this person. I only found out because we were at hers when a call came through asking if she had sent it yet. I made her tear it up. She explained that she had 'won' 20000 but had to send 1000 before they could release it. She hadnt even entered a competition. I phone police who forwarded me to a fraud team

Solitaire the people who drew that old man in were kind, reassuring, helpful and his new best friends whereas you were just an interfering woman in the post office queue.

Sad but that is probably how he saw it.
Well done for trying, I hope the PO counter staff have some success in following it up.

Graces, I'm sure you're right about the generational thing. My dad in his eighties believed that anything in the printed word had to be true. Even when I pointed out that he had no deceased relatives in Nigeria, purchased a lottery ticket in Lagos he still took some convincing. Fortunately we had moved in with him by then so we could keep an eye on this cr@p in the post and his email. We set up an email address for him so he could keep in touch with his grandson who was travelling at the time, within days he was receiving spammy messages from these despicable people. I would delete them before he had the chance to read them. Ironically he was a retired Fraud Officer in the DSS.

Again, I believe, a generation acceptance that those in authority (printed letter) are right

I think that's true, my MIL was very trusting, although scams were not so extensive when she was still alive.

"Ironically he was a retired Fraud Officer in the DSS."

Unfortunately it does tell you that anyone of us can be caught by these fraudsters. I have a friend who was scammed out of a very large sum of money by a man who, when he was finally caught and sent to prison had scammed five other women (five who had come forward at least).

I met him and he made my skin crawl and his cover story had red flags all over it but you can only say so much. All these women were very well educated, had held high level jobs and just shouldn't, if you analyse it, have fallen for him/it. I imagine different scams catch different groups and ages. What I have no idea about is how you stop these people.

'There are none so blind who will not see'. I think a lot of people wear blinkers when it comes to thinking they have an admirer, truth is the scumbags hone in on affluent women with the express purpose of relieving them of their money.

Perhaps this is a storyline that script writers could introduce in Coronation Street or Eastenders or whatever? If they showed a trusting, likeable character being charmed online by a fraudster or being excited in the Post Office as they send off the 'fee' to claim their non-existent lottery prize?

Didn't they do something like that with Audrey and Nigel Havers as the charmer?

Yes, thats right Kim19 although the story line fizzled out a bit I thought when he turned his attention on Gayle.

An awful thing to witness but you did everything you could. well done for having the courage to intervene, many people would have perhaps thought it was not my business. There are good people around you just proved that

My father in law was once saved from a scam by his bank. He did not want his drive resurfaced but the scammers put a bit of tarmac on it and then asked him for cash. He hadn't any. They took him to his bank. The staff thought it all a bit strange as the people accompanying him stood out as different. The police came and he rode home in a police car. Sadly this became on of the incidents that lead eventually to him having to give up living alone at home and coming to live with us. That was 20 years ago.

Solitaire.
Why couldn't the person have a thousand in his account? but in some accounts there are maximum withdrawals unless you give prior notice.