Have you ever met anyone who’s been scammed out of money?

Yes. Ex colleague of mine paid 5k to some con man who claimed he had sent her some money and it was held at customs. Bank stopped the second transaction, and gave her the money back. She is incredibly naive. Told her if she feels like giving money away, to speak to me.

Very clever business owner I know fell for the bankruptcy court fees scam

Various people have tried the business account fee and refund scam on me when selling on FB - don't sell on FB any more!

My now 22 yr old Son who was 19 at the time of scam. Seen marketing about social housing. Invest £13k and get £650 rent every month guaranteed for 3 years. They paid for 6 months and then nothing. Son sent a couple of emails to them and they made excuses and payments will resume. Surprise surprise he's not received anything after that!
Still owed about £8k.
This was actually money from a student loan and some employment.
I honestly thought Son wasn't this gullible or naive. I think he's hopefully learned a ( very expensive) lesson for life.

Probably about 11 years ago. Hopefully things are better now.He was let down by everyone .

The police did nothing. Advised the old man about letting people into his house and giving people money but because he had dementia it didn't help.....

I find those wordsearch competitions really, really creepy indeed. I'm sure the company that does them has had their collar felt before, but have changed their name a few times and managed to wiggle through, just about technically keeping on the right side of the law.

The words are never remotely hidden - they're always horizontal, forwards and in exactly the same place in the grid. The patronising nature of the presenter/voiceover makes it even worse, when they tell you to ignore distractions and really concentrate, so you can 'find' a word that is standing right out to you anyway, even without the giveaway 'clues'. Nobody with all of their faculties intact could genuinely think they have done well in 'finding' the answer.

I reckon you're spot on about the suckers lists. Even though the main company stays legal with their TV adverts and wordsearches, who knows what other dubious companies they could also own or be linked to behind the scenes?

Essentially, everybody who enters those is identifying themselves as almost certainly vulnerable and easily gullible when it comes to getting money out of them. It's an absolute scammers' dream.

An elderly neighbour we had years ago was conned by builders. A relative of DH was conned by a woman who made her believe that power lines were sending bad energy into her house.

There are also things that aren't strictly scams but seem like scams and can be .massively inconvenient if you want to back track on a decision made over the phone.

About 9 years ago when I was opening my business premises, I got caught by an "energy broker" while juggling a bunch of stuff one day, who opened up by spouting stuff about the government's drive for fair and efficient energy etc etc. As I'd not yet even found out who the supplier was / had been, I thought I'd sign up to their "best deal" supplier as we were due to open soon and it needed doing.

After I'd committed, I googled said supplier and the reviews were appalling - and because it was business not domestic the 14 day thing didn't apply. So we were locked in, and having seen some of the horror stories online of random high payments etc,I refused to set up a direct debit and just paid over the phone every month which infuriated them.

All my own stupid fault, obviously, but the pitch was misleading, I was under stress, and I learned a very valuable lesson.

I hate anything that "pretends" to be a direct representative of a company you're with, like you're mobile company, and actually they're a middleman company.

I do hardly anything online if I can help it, or over the phone, and never change a thing without thorough research and if possible seeing someone face to face. I keep it as simple as possible, and if that makes me a dinosaur so be it.

I have wondered about those types of threads as well. There is no way of knowing how many posters may send money to them.

My husband did before we got married. He's an intelligent man but can be quite stupid sometimes. He put some money into an online thing I can't remember quite what it was but seen it grow and I had no idea at the time but he put 1000s in after thinking it was going grow massively. Then whoever was behind it took all the money. I didn't know until just before we got married that he was 25 grand in debt.

Yes, an elderly neighbour, naive enough to believe the person who phoned out of the blue (saying she worked for NatWest!) and that neighbour had won £1m in a lottery she hadn’t even entered, but would have to make payments for ‘tax’ before she could receive it.

Around £100k later….

She didn’t have dementia, was just very naive and trusting. I’m convinced that she was targeted because of her addiction to those Wordsearch ‘competitions’, for which you so conveniently phone in all your details at £7 a minute, or whatever it is.
I believe that so called ‘suckers lists’ are compiled from such sources.

It was all done over the phone, she had no internet. She made the payments via Western Union. Eventually her dcs put a stop to the calls, but neighbour simply refused to believe that these were heartless criminals stealing her money (we tried so hard to convince her!) - they were all ‘so nice’ over the phone!

Anyone with vulnerable relatives addicted to WordSearch. ‘competitions’, do please be aware!

Thank you! And honestly it’s frightening - I’ve worked in this field for years and I still get surprised by the depths the scammers will go to get to people. It keeps me awake some nights wondering how we make it stop!

I’m glad to hear you’re cautious - a lot of scams (not all) can be stopped by just taking time and thinking about every financial decision you make - even as small as paying £2 parcel delivery fee for a fake parcel, because once they know you fall for a small scam they’ll try a bigger one!

So true - thank you for articulating this so well.

I don't know anyone IRL but it's shocking how sophisticated some of these scams can be. I am very, very cautious... but with the ironic caveat that I really don't have any money to be scammed out of in the first place. As the saying goes: "If money is the root of all evil..." well my soul is pure!

Thank you all for telling stories about those who are unlikely to get scammed but do.

I work in fraud and scams prevention - it’s my bread and butter and I know it inside out and I spend my life trying to keep on top of what the scammers are doing but it’s absolutely impossible - they are SO clever. I’ve seen people lose their houses, jobs, families and lives because of scams.

theres this misconception that it’s old people or lonely women - its not. Scams are rising in every age group, and I’ve known fraud experts get scammed as well as professors and very clever people. I genuinely believe there is a scam out there for all of us, the scammer just needs to find you at the right time.

Please don’t ever sit there and think “I’d never be stupid enough to fall for a scam” - it’s not about being stupid at all.

I also bet there are a lot of posters on here who have been scammed but won't admit it by the "It's Sunday, I'm down to 50p, no friends, no family, no foodbanks, can;t feed my toddler triplets" people who regularly post on here and other similar websites and get mugs sending them cash

I sometimes wonder about this myself, @SheinIsShite
I don't suppose I'm alone in reporting them, and TBF HQ are pretty good at adding their standard warning, but it's hard not to worry about how much they get

The scams aren't always big things either. I saw a lovely potted acer tree being given away on one of our local FB community pages recently. I asked for it and was pleased to be the one who had got in first for a change. Then it started...the person said she'd like some money for it, as it was well established, and asked me to transfer the money before collection. In return she'd reserve it for me and take the advert down from the FB page. Um...no...there's no way I'm paying for something up front before I've even seen the bloody thing.

I keep remembering other things. I had an elderly next door neighbour. Spinster, very lonely, his brother and nephew didn't bother much with him. He was befriended by a much younger woman, think she was a nurse or something, and I got suspicious. I'm sure he was buying her gifts and things. He would say how wonderful she was, and would have lovely chats with her. It was when he casually mentioned changing his will, with her as the beneficiary, that I had a serious word with him, as he'd only known her a month or so. Fortunately he saw sense and broke off contact with her. These scumbags know how to prey on lonely, vulnerable older people.

On the flip side, I'm pleased with how alert my bank is to potential scams. In the past I've had a text, asking if I recognise some out of pattern spending. It's left to me to get in touch with them if I need to query it. They're hot on spotting what is unusual for me, which in one way is good, but I do wonder if they look at my account and think "she's buying more shite from Amazon!"

A customer at work (work in new build houses) was in the process of buying a home from us, before they exchanged they received an email from what they thought was their solicitor to transfer the deposit… it wasn’t the solicitors and they lost £40k. Somehow they got it back and was able to purchase the house in the end.

My late DH was a scammers dream, so gullible. Fortunately though he had the sense to check with me when he received things. Several times he forwarded me texts or emails and I'd say FFS, don't click on the link! Another time, several years back now, he got a message, supposedly from an acquaintance, saying she was on holiday, lost her purse etc, can you send some money. He was preparing to send her a few hundred quid when I said to him...why would she message you? We only knew her because we'd bought a dog off her and she ran the training classes for the breed. I pointed out that she had much closer family and friends who would be her first point of call. Told him to contact her on her landline and lo and behold, she'd been hacked and several of her contacts had received the same message.

Now my 89yo mum on the other hand is the opposite. She regularly gets the Microsoft/Amazon calls. She shouts down the phone that she doesn't have a computer and tells them to piss off before hanging up on them 🤣🤣 She also watches a lot of the scammer tv shows and knows not to give out personal details. She's probably annoyed some genuine callers over the years who need her DOB or something to verify her.

My dad (who was in early stages of dementia at the time) got stung with one of those Microsoft scams which are nothing to do with Microsoft but I think he paid something like £200 for useless "software". That was about 6 years ago, dad has since died but Mum still gets a lot of similar calls, I think because their number is flagged as an easy mark. Mum just refuses to engage.

I also bet there are a lot of posters on here who have been scammed but won't admit it by the "It's Sunday, I'm down to 50p, no friends, no family, no foodbanks, can;t feed my toddler triplets" people who regularly post on here and other similar websites and get mugs sending them cash.

My DH often helps older friends with their computers....one evening he got a panicked call from a friend in his 80s who had fallen for the Windows assistance scam and had given them his card details and handed over control of his computer. DH told him to pull the plug on his internet connection and phone his bank to stop the card and rushed round. The scammers kept calling back while he was there saying that they were owed more money for the work they'd done, and threatening to report him to the police for asking them to do work and then not paying them. Gits.

I was a few years back, but not to the extent in your OP. In 2019 my DH was suffering from cancer and we decided to buy a nice piece of garden furniture so he could enjoy the garden more in comfort. I did all the research and ordered the item - about £1,600. I thought I was very savvy about fake websites, as we had constant training at work, but I got caught out by a good one. The salesman was brilliant before I ordered but of course, was slower to answer questions after I'd paid. As the delivery date drew nearer I started to get very anxious and did more delving. I realised the site wasn't legit after all. It was agonising having to tell DH I'd probably been scammed.

Fortunately Barclays came through for us. Even though I had paid by debit card, I spoke with their fraud team and they managed to do a claw back of the money, so to our relief we eventually got it back. It was a horrendous experience, especially when we were already going through such a difficult time.

Very nearly a fair few years ago, I was stressed about something else, it was coming up to Christmas, I was at work and I responded to a text I thought was my bank, said I had to re login or something. I did but as soon as I did it, I realised it was a scam, called my bank and they acted swiftly and cancelled my card. They tried a fair few times on the old details. I thought I was savvy enough but it can get you, if you let your guard down. I felt very stupid but luckily no money was taken.

How long ago was this? Banks are really wise to this sort of thing now. Both me and DSis have been made to feel like absolute crooks when our dad needed assistance getting money from his bank to pay for work that had genuinely been done on his house. He was interviewed for hours and so were we, with people standing over us and behind us. Really creepy.

Yes, a friend of a friend. She was an Oxford university graduate and had model good looks - tall, thin, perfect bone structure. She could literally have had any man she wanted. She fell for a really ropey, manipulative man who lied and lied and cheated on her with crazy excuses that none of us believed for a second. But she seemed blinded by him. Constantly making innocent excuses for his preposterous behaviour and demands. He 'borrowed' thousands of pounds from her in 1980s. When she finally realised she'd never get it back, the scales fell from her eyes. But the police did nothing. He just moved on to his next victim.