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

Yes, a very good friend of mine. Very educated and smart woman. Someone conned all her savings (150k out of her). She never told me or anyone that this was happening. If it can happen to someone like her (head usually firmly screwed on) it can happen to anyone. she only let her parents know when she ran out of money (to ask for more money) and that was the beginning of the end. It's hair raising to think about it.

I was almost caught recently by a PayPal scam. I had an email saying that someone had set up a suspected false payment to Boots, and asked me to call them

I logged into my PayPal account and there was the payment exactly as on the email.

I navigated to the fraud section and the phone number on their website was the same as on the letter, so I was comfortable in calling.

The person on the phone mumbled a bit, so I asked if it was PayPal and he said yes.

The conversation just didn't feel right, so I just hung up the phone, and changed my password.

I consider myself quite savvy at spotting scams, but as I hadn't clicked any links in the email, and the phone number matched that on their website made me believe it.

Regarding the "mum, I've lost my phone" one, we have a family password which would be requested if any of us were in any kind of trouble.

My son received one of those. He's definitely not a mum 😂

Same happened to my father in law. He was sensible enough to call them back but line kept open. He died of a heart attack a few days later, my DH links it to the scammers as FIL was a very fit and healthy 68 year old who had had a routine GP health check a few weeks before and was told he was 'low risk'.

Yes, a female relative got tricked by a scammer into giving access/control of her computer. They got into her bank account and took money. But it suddenly clicked that this wasn't right mid call and contacted her bank on a different phone. Thankfully stopped and she got the smaller amount she lost back.

But she felt so stupid and ashamed! It really knocked her confidence for a while. I think they purposely rush you and make you panic on those sorts of calls.

I nearly fell for one of those vitamin/weight loss pills scams that charge you ridiculously prices after you pay a small amount for postage. It is all in the small print but how many people just tick the box to say they read it and then don't? I entered some details and then thought it was a bit dodgy so didn't submit it, thank goodness!

The same thing happened to my friend. She lost over £100k. They kept the line open and convinced her they were the banks fraud department and got her to transfer into a ‘safe’ account. This was years ago now and I think (hope) security measures wouldn’t allow this to happen.

I have noticed that every time I go on the HMRC website I get a dodgy email a few moments after.

I think most people know someone if you explicitly ask around. We have a family friend in his 70s who lost a relatively small amount for him (I think just hundreds) in an email scam.

Someone I know fell for the COL payments text scam.
Someone else lost £150K to the email that sell you shares in whisky.
A couple people feel for some other scam and lost a couple thousand and someone else had the ‘bank’ call, they tried to call the bank to confirm but the scammers stayed connected. They lost £5k.
No one got the money back and they are all people that aren’t vulnerable and that I would never have believed would have fallen for this.

When we moved house we kept getting letters from the solicitor warning we were at high risk of fraud due to the amounts being transferred. Basically they said that hackers can have hacked your email account but don’t do anything yet, just watch for an opportunity involving large sums. They then intercept say an email with an invoice attachment, change the payment details on the invoice to their own then let the email land in your inbox and you end up paying the scammers. They also wait for the day you’re exchanging and send an email pretending to be from the solicitor saying you need to pay this much today.
if you ever get an email saying someone’s bank details have changed, always ring them and speak to them in person to confirm.

My colleague was very nearly caught by a scam - she did the account books for a friend. 'HMRC' phoned to tell her that £3k was owing for VAT by the friend, it needed to be paid right now or else.

She panicked and was rushing round trying to sort the payment until another colleague said 'that sounds like a scam'.

My colleague was nobody's fool but anyone can fall for a scam if it catches your Achilles heel.

A good (elderly) friend who's husband had just died got caught in a property related one and she didn't even do anything wrong!

The house was listed to sell, someone took the pictures from right-move and created a gumtree ad to rent the house out. It was mid covid so I guess tours were less common, but a whole family turned up with a moving van from the other side of the country, thinking they were perfectly legally renting the house and had already paid thousands in advance rent/deposit etc. Obviously the police were called and my friend was hauled over the coals as it was assumed she was part of the scam initially.

Yes we did sadly by a landscaper. He was advertising his services on Facebook (10 years ago now). He gave us a quote then said he needed £2k upfront for materials. He did some work ordered a couple of fence panels. Then left the job after about 2 days never to be seen. We were devastated as we'd just had building work done and the garden was a mess.

I saw on Facebook later he was also pretending to be a teacher/or tutor type of person.

A friend got conned out of thousands buying into crypto. He’d been told his return would double so despite my husband telling him it was clear bs, he put in £2500, then when that wasn’t enough secretly put in another £10,000.

Him and his wife also fell for the sales pitch with the foam loft insulation (bad emotion it’s own) where they were told by a guy that randomly showed up he had one final discount he could give out and he still had other houses to go to. She was telling me about it gleefully and it took a bit of convincing to make them believe they weren’t getting a deal. We made them cancel it.

some people are just susceptible to believe people I guess.

My grandad got a text a couple of years ago saying he needed to log on to the NHS app and pay for his certificate to prove he had been vaccinated against covid for 99p..
He logged on and paid the 99p and had his bank cleared out at the same time.

Yes!! I know several older men who send money to women they’ve met online who are in ‘distress’.. we’re talking thousands of pounds sent.. it’s mad and it’s rife imo..

I fell for a Joules closing down sale and happily put £160 worth of bits in my basket , checked out and waited patiently

Week later whilst looking to see if I could track the delivery I saw the email confirmation was something like " [email protected]" I realised I'd been fooled , when I went into the bank to ask if I should order a new card just in case , they opened a dispute , new card on phone immediately and refunded within 24 hrs , I was really impressed and much more vigilant since .

I also have a work colleague who took 4 years and over £30,000 getting rid of her very young Tunisian husband . That's a whole other story.

I had the opposite: what looked like a really obvious scam about 'your parcel'. Later that day, a delivery person arrived with a small item that I'd completely forgotten that I'd ordered!

It doesn't help that a lot of companies seem to have a 'chain' of parties who are involved in getting your parcel to you - so the logo on the delivery person's badge/jacket and van bears no resemblance at all to the company you ordered from or any familiar delivery company.

Woman I used to work with got scammed by an online Indian fake romance scam. To the tune of 10's of thousands of ££. Took out loans etc to send to a man she'd never met. She only found out cause police told her.

I think the banks could do a lot more to protect old people from scammers. Transferring large amounts of cash should require a bank visit and chat with a manager

My brother’s FIL fell for the one where his “son” texted saying he’d lost his phone.

My Dad lost nearly £100k, not even all his money - he borrowed from banks and family. It took a long time for us to find out and it was very hard to convince him he was being scammed.

I got a 'mum I lost my phone' text, and was so lucky that ds and I happen to use an unusual sign-off to our texts, so i knew it wasn't him. Wasn't deliberate to set it up but it saved me!

I know someone who lost £5k booking a fake holiday villa online. Don't know if they got anything back.
This was someone with a fairly senior IT role, which goes to show its not just the technophobe grannies and grandpas that can fall victim.

I was scammed out of an item I had paid 500 for.
It was gone; the business closed and building empty when I went to collect it a week after purchase.

My BIL's mum was scammed out of $5000 by someone pretending to be from a telecommunications company. She's normally pretty savvy, but she had just had her internet connection upgraded which made her think it was legitimate, so the timing was perfect from the scammers' point of view.

A friend's step-father left his wife (friend's mum) for some Facebook romance scammer.