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

I know plenty of people that have. My mum was scammed once and also robbed a couple times. My mum's mate got that scam where some guy pretends to be a police officer and she gets roped in to helping expose fraudulent internal activity at the bank. I think she lost tens of thousands. She's one of those really kind people who could be taken in. She already gave her house to a homeless drug addict to live in for free ad infinitum. She lives with her sister as the druggy guy has taken over her house but she says it's fine and she's happy with the arrangement? Some people are really susceptible to this type of thing sadly.

A couple down our road. Husband, in his 70s, became convinced that a pretty TV presenter wanted him to leave his wife for her and somehow ended up handing over something in the region of £275k in savings to a romance scammer. Unsurprisingly she threw him out and he is now living in a bedsit.

I did get the "Mum I've lost my phone text" and I naively replied "you must have the wrong number as I don't have any kids" . I only read about the scam a week or two later.

Did he actually even contact his bank?? Go to the ombudsman? He definitely has a good case to get this back.

On a lighter note, I got the ‘mum I’ve lost my phone’ scam text when at the time I had a 6 month old baby and no other children 😂
Can see how it can be quite convincing when you have teenagers etc though!

Amazingly, a lot of the scammers who are based in huge foreign call centres wouldn't even consider themselves as scum or even doing anything all that wrong, really.

They have the mindset - probably exaggerated further to them by their 'employers' - that they are just working hard and earning money to house and feed their families 'legitimately'.

Their premises are all set-up smart, modern and professional; not seedy shacks like we probably imagine. They likely have a line manager, regular meetings and appraisals of how they've met their KPIs.

Yes, they may have to tell a few half-truths, but they are poor and the people they are calling are very rich indeed - all westerners are multi-millionaires, probably - so they're only really like modern-day Robin Hoods.

There are loads of scammers selling " the dream van lifestyle" & if you watch the adverts regularly, you can pick out the scams.

I'm surprised that Nicola didn't claim that had happened to her when she got found out!!

ExDP's cousin who is in her 80s was scammed out of tens of thousands. It was the one where they call from the 'bank' and tell you that you need to transfer your money into another account to keep it safe.

Know someone that paid for a camper van that they had seen on the Internet. They never saw the van in person. They requested the van to be delivered, but the van never arrived. The scam was reported to the police.

There are loads of scammers selling " the dream van lifestyle" & if you watch the adverts regularly, you can pick out the scams.

@UhOhhhhh it was online only, messages plus some delightful pics of a silver fox 'Norwegian architect' called Björn. I have absolutely no excuse, I'm really not so unbelievably naive as a rule. I can track some issues that made me a bit more vulnerable at that time - it was less than two years after the death of my husband, and about 4 weeks after the death of the elderly scammed relative I mentioned, and i was juggling a lot of sadmin and crap. 'Björn' sent me some flowery nice messages and i latched on to them. I was also taking some other stupid risks at the time, i think for the adrenaline hit, which is normally the opposite of the person i am (I'm usually nervous of bridges and never watch 18 certificate movies). It just shows that it's not just a few people who can be vulnerable to this.

A slightly freaky coincidence was that the amount I sent 'him' was exactly the amount that my elderly scammed relative left in the bank at his death (he'd been in hospital a week or two and his state pension was in there).

What is this scam?

A lad at work who has autism, let’s call him John. He’s desperate for a girlfriend bless him and goes all in on any woman who is even remotely nice to him. There was one woman came to work here temporarily, long story short he married her within about a month. She moved into his flat along with her male “cousin” and they shared the bed while John slept on the sofa. She got him to add her name to the flat, and gave up her job, the cousin never had one, so both lived off him. Finally his family managed to intervene, and he went back to live with his mother and got a divorce, but the wife/cousin kept his flat and the vast majority of the contents. Utter cunts.

The other one was my uncle. He fell for some guff about a long lost relative dying leaving millions, and uncle was of course the sole beneficiary. He was all set to transfer £10,000 for fees, the bank put a stop to it thank god, but not before he’s sent them copies of his passport, birth certificate driving licence etc.

My uncle was in his mid 50s at the time, running his own very successful business so nothing like the usual vulnerable type.

A former colleague was email fished an investment deal.
Thinking it looked okay, he sent £500 and got £750 back a week or so later.
Then he sent £1k and got £1500 back, so £750 in profit.
Then he just figured it was probably dodgy so stopped and deleted all of his details.
Whoever it was sent him hundreds and hundreds of emails threatening all sorts if he didn't give the money back.
He had to set up a whole new email account.

I had the same with Marie Curie, would ring me up in the evenings and ask for more money so I just cancelled my DD altogether.

I remember a few years back on the news there was a lady (in Bristol I think) took her own life, when her family were going through her things it turned out she was hugely in debt due to paying out thousands in DDs to charities who had hounded her, her house was full of begging letters and calls showed they'd been relentless in pursuing her for more and more money. I remember her poor family on the news trying to get something done to protect vulnerable people from charities that do this.

I'm about due my annual Amazon Prime signup 'scam'. You have to be so careful at checkout not to sign up!

Yes, a couple of people, long time ago. One man, one woman, plus a couple who had near misses. Would be scammers are all over social media and often come out with the same patter.

My ex and my mother scammed me

He left me for another woman,leaving me with 8k of debts he'd signed for in my name (I knew nothing about them)

How he did that,I will never know and nobody was bothered about the fraud,they just wanted their money and I didn't have it

My narcissistic mother swooped in and paid the whole lot off on the condition I paid her back (which was fair enough)

I started paying her back at £150/200 a week (early 2000)

I had very poor mental health at the time due to postnatal depression and was going through hell with my ex,so I just paid it and was glad to be chipping away at the figure

Then it would be 'you couldn't afford important item/school trip/whatever,so I've paid it and I'll tack it to what you owe me'

I paid her back well over 50k (8k was the debt and the rest the other bits)

Dp and I sat down and worked out I'd overpaid by at least 30k minimum (if not a lot more,i think it was more 80k but i cant prove it)

I'm not thick at all,im very wary of scams-but until you've been the scapegoat,then you'll never understand it-plus your mum wouldn't con you?

Would she?

Mine doesn't see she did anything wrong and I'd still be paying it off 24 years later if I hadn't have gone nc with her-shes more bothered about losing my money than she is about losing me and the grandchildren

For my job I often have to arrange for people to make payments to Estate Agents and I tell them never to do it unless they verify the account details, I usually phone The Agent using the phone number on the agents website, and get them to read the account details over the phone to check they are the same ones in the email link.

I imagine we all have, it's just that people tend not to talk about it.

We were scammed about 10 years ago now when our builder had his email hacked (before these kind of 'invoice scams' were common knowledge) and asked for a deposit against forthcoming works. We lost about 3k. I tried to tell as many people about it as possible but the temptation to keep quiet and feel embarrassed is quite large.

Nobody I know - we are far too cautious. But a member of staff got a (very obviously) scam email - you know the sort, where someone has £200 million and you've inherited part of it from a long lost relative in Outer Mongolia? He asked me if it was real. I told him no it wasn't, delete it, it was a scam, it was obvious etc etc. Two weeks later, having sent them all his bank details, they cleared out his account. I knew he wasn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I hadn't realised he was quite that stupid. I can see how people fall for sophisticated scams. Even some of the not quite so sophisticated ones. But not one that transparent.

Ouch. Gonna take a while to get over that.

I work with people who have dementia. You'd be amazed at the number of estranged relatives who suddenly appear and offer to take on Lasting Power of Attorney when a diagnosis is made.

I had great fun with one of these.
First of all I asked how the weather was there in Australia (DD is in The UK) then I spent ages telling them all the local "gossip", including how him next door had been caught shagging the postman (again).
Eventually I got told to Fuck off - not very nice "DD"