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

[UhOhhhhh]

I’m currently watching Love Rats on Netflix which I know is an old documentary. It’s made me wonder just how many people have been scammed (or close to being scammed) in their lives before. The fact that some of the victims have had £10K, £40K and even £120K taken from them by scammers is crazy!!

Have you ever known anyone that’s been scammed? I luckily don’t think I have

Yep, that stereotype is long gone although of course lots of older people are still victims of scammers.

I know an account who lost over 100k in a bitcoin scam.

Unsure if this falls under scam but after my DGF died my DGM reinvested a lot of their investments with the same financial advisor they had always used. When going back to him she found he had done a flit a while previously and everything of hers was gone. She was too embarrassed to mention it to anyone as she felt she had let my DGF down so did not chase anything up and just lost her money. Was late 90s and around £20,000. Luckily she could afford to lose it but the guilt she felt was horrendous.

A middle aged divorced man I know invested about £60k in a get rich quick scheme on the advise of a v attractive and much younger woman he had met in a bar and to whom he became engaged after meeting just once and lots of loving texts. Funnily enough he never saw woman or money again. What goes through these men's minds? It beggars belief.

My mum was contacted on her landline by scammers saying they were from Amazon or something of the sort and trying to prevent fraud and asked for bank details etc. My mum fell for it and would've handed said bank details over but she was blind and couldn't read the security number on her card. Luckily she called me to ask what to do and I told her to put the phone down and nothing was taken. My mum was a very sharp no nonsense woman back in the day but her age and disabilities had made her vulnerable. Fucking cunts preying on old people.

Many of my friends along with members of my family were scammed out of £400-£1000 each by a so called friends DH.

Turned out they weren't the only ones.

Police were involved and they both left the country.

So called friend came back recently when he was arrested in the country they moved to for you guessed it...... fraud!

My lovely, previously switched on 90 year old Dad. Classic con. Roofer knocked at door said working in street noticed problem with his roof persuaded him to drive to bank to get cash to pay for work .No work done. £800 Never seen again.Police were very supportive but nothing could be done. I was SO SO angry that my Dad had become a target

My teenage son with his first bank card. They cloned his card, not once, not twice, not three times, you gussed it four times in as many months. In fact the last card hadn’t even been delivered and it was used hundreds of miles away. The bank refunded all the monies. I suspect it was someone from the bank

DH £800 flight ticket with a fake travel agent.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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!!!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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)

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.

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.