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

Do you mean big scams or small scams? Lots of 'small' scams about.

I've lost money trying to get a good deal by buying a voucher to then get the item, but it was out of stock so money voucher wasn't able to be redeemed. Won't ever do that again.

Also I tried to rent a flat, private landlord that seemed legit initially when showing me around Then I smelled a rat so did some checks and cancelled the cheque. It was a scam.

I've seen a few fairly convincing email phishing scams too. Not actually fallen for them though.

A friend’s elderly MIL. Scammers called her and pretended to be her bank. She was savvy enough to say she needed to call her bank’s number to be sure it was her bank, but they stayed on the line and kept up the pretence. She lost £30k.

A friend fell for the 'Mum I lost my phone' scam

I was scammed out of £800 by a fake tradesperson when I was a young adult. Not thousands but it was a lot of money to me and caused undue stress and upset.

My mum. In real life, rather than online. She just wouldn't listen to me when I asked her why a 30 year old married man would be interested in a nearly 70 year old woman. In the end I had to forbid her from talking about him to me. Over £10,000 later (which she didn't have, so was all on loans and credit cards) she had to sell her house to pay it off and ended her life in debt in a council bungalow (which she was damn lucky to get!)

FIL and a former client. Both via Facebook for Amazon type vouchers from a “woman”. DH then noticed someone buying a large amount of the same vouchers in a supermarket and was able to speak to them and explain what had happened to his DF. He wasn’t sure if they took much notice but hopefully he made them think twice. I think it’s more common than we realise.

My 80 year old neighbour was scammed to the tune of around £30,000. He told me this in tears, it was his life savings, he'd wanted to leave it to his daughter. He'd been contacted about an investment scheme, and asked to invest £500. Within a few weeks his bank account had been credited with around £800. This convinced him it was genuine and he then invested £30k. Never heard from anyone again. Lost the lot. Police couldn't help. I always wonder what would have happened if he'd just taken the £800 and stopped there. Would he have scammed the scammers?