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

Surely this is a safeguarding issue ? How could the police not do something such as getting a pcso involved ?

Dh mum scammed by "gardeners" who drove her to a cash point to withdraw 2k

Dh cousin scammed by romance scam to tune of 300k

Neither has a pot to piss in now

Wrong relative! Correction below

I think was a scam but on the lower end of scams husband ordered us a meal and drinks at a pub bar and a woman stood next to him asked for a bottle of wine , got given it and walked off . It was added to my husbands bill but as he pointed out the woman was not with him and please take off the wine before he paid . They did . I wonder how many times this woman has pulled that trick .

My father-in-laws poor neighbour got scammed out of all his savings by travellers. He lived alone and had dementia. The scammers knocked his door one day asking if he needed any jobs doing. They quickly realised that he wasn't a well man and pestered him constantly for months. They would tell him that he hadn't paid them for work they'd done for him ( they hadn't) and he'd end up paying them over and over for the same job. They even took him to the bank several times to get the money ( who never even questioned it...). My FIL bravely stepped in a couple of times and told them to clear off but they were relentless. He reported it to the police twice but was told that,unless the old man reported it himself then they couldn't do anything about it!
He had a son but he didn't live nearby so didn't do much.
Anyway, several months later, the old man went missing. Went out for a walk and never came back. He was found dead from a heart attack in a ditch 2 weeks later. Turns out he was penniless- they'd not only scammed all his money out of him, they'd made his last month's on this earth frightening and miserable
Needless to say, the travellers were never found.

Anyone who doubts that anyone would fall for the 'widowed Army general, 'I love your smile'' scam should head over to Quora, where numerous people desperately try to find the real identities of their 'online lover'.

If only it was made somehow illegal to send money to someone you'd never met in real life, these scams would dry up overnight (I know, I know it's impossible to make it illegal. I just wish there was a way of stopping it!)

No one who is scammed should EVER feel ashamed or unwilling to admit it. Even really well educated and incredibly intelligent people can fall for scams, especially the romance ones.

My Mum was nearly scammed. Had a call from her 'bank' saying her card had been cloned and had been used to try and get £3000 out of a cashpoint. She immediately rang me, because she was waiting for a call back from them as they wanted her card details so they could cancel it.....I told her that if it was the bank then they wouldn't need her details as they already had them and they wouldn't ask over the phone for them anyway....plus, they wouldn't be able to get 3 grand out of a cashpoint anyway..I contacted the fraud team, cancelled her cards and blocked the calls. It was a horrible time- she was in her 70s and it made her ill. There's a special place in hell for scammers....
My brother's in laws fell for the letter from Nigeria scam where someone had died with no family so they were looking to pass his money on to someone with the same surname. To be honest, my brothers in-laws are money grabbers and we all warned them but they didn't listen. I mean, who is going to give total strangers 3 million pounds from another country? Anyway, they got quite enmeshed in it, to the point where they were looking at new cars and houses! They'd sent a couple of hundred pounds to the scammers for 'admin' and they were getting faxes constantly asking for more....
Then suddenly, the money could be released! But they needed to send £25,000 for fees connected to this release because it came from a different country and there were charges...
Well, they didn't have £25k ( for sure they would have sent it if they did because all they could think about was the 3 million) so they asked if it could be taken off the 3 million...
and they never heard from them again. Surprise surprise.....

I’ve had lots of small scams, recently bought trainers from a website that turned out to be fake and from china, I’ve also had a mobile phone account set up in my name, we were also conned out of £2k by a tradesman who didn’t do the work and left us in a right mess.

Came across this story of Daisy the AI granny today and immediately and thought of this thread.

news.virginmediao2.co.uk/o2-unveils-daisy-the-ai-granny-wasting-scammers-time/

My DH works in IT and finds these calls hilarious. If he wants to talk to someone at Microsoft for tech support, he has to call them, wait on hold for 20-30 minutes, and then let them charge his credit card $250 before the call even starts.

I had a call this morning allegedly from Microsoft saying that my net work was open to abuse and did I have a computer and a husband or children . I said I had none of those and the line went dead . The caller was from India and she knew my name .

"Neighbour’s dad sent loads of money to an animal charity. A real charity but they kept sending letters begging for more cash and he donated about 50000 pounds in the end, his savings. Not a scam but not right in my book."

Any charity that badgers me for more gets cut off - looking at you Guide Dogs. By way of contrast, Smile and Water Aid happily accept £2 or £3 a month by DD and never ask for anything else - so I will happily carry in giving tot them.

I had to jump on when my mum was dating.

Met a really nice German guy, chatted every day, very brief video chat (bad quality)... Then came the story of his daughter needing a laptop for his studies, pay cheque not arriving, illness etc.

I sat her down, and we went through his dating profile. Virtually all of it was copied from other profiles, the language was poor, the picture was found elsewhere, the address to send the laptop wasn't even in the area, a whole long list.

Managed to stop about a thousand pounds going out the door!

Yes, a very switched on streetwise friend was scammed out of £12k by someone pretending to be from his bank's fraud team.

I was but luckily only £50! It was an advert for Taylor Swift tickets a d I stupidly didn't realise it was a scam, sent £50 as a deposit and that was the last I heard.

I read that there are HUGE "scam factories" in India and other places and in order to scam 1 person they make on average 250000 calls but its worth it from a business point of view.

The scammer only needs to get lucky sometimes. An astute or savvy parent may not fall for it but an elderly or distracted/confused parent might.

My elderly DM would have been vulnerable to the mobile phone scam. The desire to be useful and 'the one who helped' her adult DD.

The mobile phone scam is also a 'thin end of the wedge' scam. Once the scammer has the new number lodged in the victim's phone as 'Gnome' they are much more able to persuade the victim to transfer more and more money.

My friend was very drunk and he used his fingerprint for everything security wise on his phone. He doesn't remember the specifics but I can imagine the guy pretended the phone had been locked so my friend would use his fingerprint again, when in reality he was logging into the banking app for this guy. The drink would also have messed up friend's (already terrible) perception of time.

From what my friend went onto learn, this was a pretty common scam in soho. A good looking bloke would target gay men who were drunk, get them more drunk (he bought my friend several drinks) and then get access to their phones. If this was then reported to the police, the man would claim he gave them cash/they agreed to send the money/was paying for services rendered.

My mum (who's now 80) got scammed last year.

It was someone who called her number with a story about their screen being broken (hence they weren't able to text) and needing to borrow money to get a new phone. Despite them not knowing my name, or (as far as I can tell) claiming to be her daughter, she seems to have assumed it was me, and was so keen to help me in my hour of need that she went into her online banking and transferred something like £6k to them (ignoring the bank's warning messages)

I have never ever asked her for money, or borrowed any amount from her - never mind a small fortune of that size - so I was baffled by how easily she was duped. She didn't try calling me back on my phone at the time - don't know why not - but luckily called my brother, who had the presence of mind to contact me and ask if I'd been in touch with her saying I needed money for something.

I was so angry at the whole situation that I rang the police (in Scotland - Action Fraud only covers England & Wales), who took it seriously and even sent an officer out to talk to her. The bank actually refunded her money, thankfully (although I'm not sure why they felt they had to do this).

The only good thing about this whole sorry incident is that she's unlikely to fall for that sort of scam again. But rest assured that it certainly does happen, and people keep falling for it. Before this I'd thought she was quite savvy - she's been travelling all over the world and dealt with lots of issues - but whatever they said seems to have been very effective

No astute or savvy patent would fall for it though. It’s pretty obvious it’s not your child’s way of talking reasonably quickly. I honestly don’t understand how anyone would possibly fall for it!

Just chatting to my (elderly) mum. Someone knocked on her door today talking about cables and speed in her area

she felt sorry for him as it was cold and raining. Told him a fair few details till he asked for her mobile phone to check the download speed on her WiFi. This is a new one for me people asking for your mobile at the door

she told him thanks but no thanks but is still feeling mean by telling him no

I have noticed that people can be intelligent and critical in one direction but quite credulous in another. With the additional problem that they are so used to their intelligence being reliable that they can be almost impossible to challenge.