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

Yes, this relative, and I have name changed as I don’t want this linked to my main account. The scammer had his sentence commuted by Trump. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/family-duped-for-millions-in-scam/2FO7TYHDEP3MSSICLUM7FEYGZY/

With the last one, how did he manage to set up all the details required for payment to a new bank account in the time you'd expect it to take for someone to input a phone number? That's pretty quick work! Oh, and was there not a PIN on the banking app?

My student son had his phone stolen in London a couple of weeks ago. In the 30mins it took him to get to a police station to report it thetheives managed to unlock his phone, access all his cards, transfer money from his bank account, use Apple Pay to buy clothes and shoes, changed his email address and access all his passwords.

The phone was locked and had facial recognition, all his passwords were completely different and he had 2 step verification. It's taken 2 weeks to rectify and recover everything. Never underestimate the skills of these scammers

Keeping this as vague as possible so as not to be identifying to people involved/relatives of the person.

A woman I knew had recently got divorced and had a large sum of money through the sale of their property. Went on holiday to an African country and 'fell in love'. She was in her 60s, he was significantly younger. She bought property out there, shortly afterwards married him and moved there.

A little while after the marriage she died in an 'accident' and no money was ever seen by the family members as presumably the husband of a few months had it all.

Devastating for the family, they could never prove any foul play. Perhaps there wasn't any but the circumstances were highly suspicious.

In DH's previous job the CEO was scammed out of a massive amount of money, fake phone call from the supposed ead of Accounts or whoever. She lost her job because of it.

Transferred around £150k I think

These people are so cruel when they work on people they know are nice and biddable.

People in general need to work on their inner bitch... if my bank told me this I'd say 'Well you deal with it then... I'm not sorting out your issue. Your motivation for doing it well is not having to find the balance of my account from somewhere else.'

That said, I have had a few moments when I've had to check myself. Some scams are so sophisticated.

Our neighbour (as in my pp) was warned not to tell any friends or family, since ‘they’ll only be jealous and try to stop you getting the money’ (‘lottery’ scam).

One thing I was told, never have your banking app PIN the same as the unlock PIN on your phone. Possible that someone watches you unlock your phone then takes the phone “ to put in their number”

An elderly neighbour was scammed out of over £100k - ‘tax payments’ for a ‘lottery win’ - a lottery she hadn’t even entered. She was just incredibly naive. We only found out about it when it had been going on for some time, she simply refused to believe that these were vile criminals stealing her money. They were all so nice on the phone!

Her children eventually out a stop to it by blocking unknown callers - it was all done over the phone. I read soon afterwards about ‘Suckers’ Lists’ that are compiled and sold on, and I wouldn’t mind betting she was picked because of her addiction to those Wordsearch ‘competitions’, where you conveniently phone in your every last detail at ££ per minute.

My Mum was once - she called me in a panic saying that £450 worth of Nike trainers had been bought with her card and the bank couldn't tell her if or when they could get the money back to her.

Thankfully she did manage to get it back through the bank but as far as I'm aware, whoever did it never got caught.

No but when I needed to make a 10kish payment to someone the bank made me call them and absolutely grilled for about 20 minutes me before they would release the money. It was a pain as it was a genuine transaction but I'm glad they take the time to try to stop these things (although it is to protect themselves mainly)

A friend’s mother was taken in by a scammer who represented himself as a Master Sergeant in the US Army, serving in the Middle East. She tried to convince her mom that it was a scam, and that a real army sergeant would not be constantly skint unless he had serious vices he was paying for.

She turned to me for help because I served in the US Army and have known them both for years. I’m an American. It took several phone calls and emails, but I was able to show her how much money a noncommissioned officer with that rating would make on deployment (quite a lot of money) and convince her that he would not have to pay for medical care, permission to take leave and all sorts of other expenses he was asking her to pay for. She blocked him, but at that point she was out about $10k.

My mum scammed my grandmother out of thousands. It went to civil court, one of the many reasons I am no contact with her

Which is why you need to have some verbal verification agreed, e.g. How is the dog after his operation, if your 'don't doesn't include that it's a fake call.

Why should a bank be expected to support scammers by replacing lost money? They're not the scammers, it isn't the bank's fault when people are scammed.

I stopped supporting Shelter due to this. They were relentless in contacting me for more money. Eventually they sent me a cd with recordings of sob stories cane I wondered how much that had cost, sending out CD’s…no it was too much, I was getting at least 4 letters a week from them. I stopped my DD and then noticed they reply chuggers and again that money that could be used to fund the charity!

My mum, she has dementia and a few years ago a ‘tradesman’ called at the door. He quoted work and from what she said he also cased the joint, asking how the back door locked etc. She handed him a deposit of £3k in cash…even if she told us there is no reasoning with her.

A neighbour of mine lost £45k by someone pretending to be the fraud squad from her bank. She still refuses to believe the “nice man” probably isn’t even called Luke

Some friends of mine fell for one that was common about ten years ago when someone from 'your bank' would ring up with a spiel about fraudulent activity, ask for lots of info including your pin, and would then send round a motorbike courier to collect your bank card so it could not be used fraudulently anymore... Lots of urgency and pressure so they didn't have time to think until after the motorbike roared away; by the time they called their actual bank about half an hour later, hundreds of pounds had been taken from their account.

My intelligent dad was sending lots of money to his 'girlfriend' in Russia, I saw a photo of her - she was stunning, my dad isn't ! He sent her money for a holiday and flew over to Russia for a month to see her but she got Covid so couldn't meet him and eventually he was told she had died. It was horrific, he was traumatised as his previous (very real) partner had died very young only 2 years previously. He still cannot see he was scammed and genuinely believes she died.

Yes, a relative lost over 6 figures in a crypto scam. They had made a decent living trading until that point but I few personal stressors means they took their eye off the ball and it went…it was a quite a big scam that span numerous countries. They were contacted by the FBI but I this was a couple of years ago and so assume they never found the culprits.

Just remembered me and DH!

Many years ago when he was self employed he leased his work van. At the end of the 4 year lease he had the option to give the van back or buy it.

When he contacted them the company said they had been taken over by a large well known bank who were closing the commercial vehicle leasing part of the business so didn't want the vans back, quoted him a good price to buy it.

We sent them a cheque, v5 arrived in DH name, all good.

Until 3 months later a bailiff turned up at our house to repossess the van for non-payment!!!!

It turned out someone had cashed our cheque, we suspected a disgruntled employee (they were all losing their jobs as a result of the takeover).

Luckily our bank sorted it and he got to keep the van!!!

With the last one, how did he manage to set up all the details required for payment to a new bank account in the time you'd expect it to take for someone to input a phone number? That's pretty quick work! Oh, and was there not a PIN on the banking app?

My grandfather (in his late 70s/ 80s at the time) started “going out” with a much younger woman (30s) he met through his church. He gave her very large amounts of money, to pay for her studies, trips back to Poland to visit her family. He even ended up paying the rent on an apartment in <neighbouring country> so she could live there. They were meant to be engaged, he bought her a ring and everything and she was supposedly getting the apartment ready (had to be just right and she kept asking for money to furnish/ decorate it) so he could live there with her. It dragged out, his health took a turn for the worse and eventually I think he started to get worried about it and suspicious. It all came out. My uncle was furious. He and his wife flew over and went to the apartment to confront the woman and everything. It turned out that she had been living in the apartment with her boyfriend. There was no way of getting any of the money back of course. All in all, it was a really shocking amount. They consulted a solicitor but as he said, the money had been given willingly etc. The woman and her bf disappeared then anyway, never to be seen or heard from since. My grandfather died not too long after.

Oh I remember another one.
me, I was buying an Apple Watch online (not from Apple) and the guy asked me to do a Lydia payment. They emptied my pitiful bank account. I got the money back from my bank.
FYI I was in the UK and Lydia payments are popular in France.

Me. I fell for a romance scam off Guardian Soulmates, there's a thread about it on here somewhere. Not huge amounts thank goodness but it was insanely stupid.

And an older relative. Followed up the classic Nigerian Prince email and was in the clutches of an increasing network of scum from all over the world until his death, for about ten years I think. He had terrible credit scores (went bankrupt in his 50s, state pension only, no assets) and we couldn't see why they kept calling him, and then we found he was persuading acquaintances and even his partner to hand over vast sums which he sent to the scammers. He was bloody lucky he didn't end up in jail.