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

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.

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

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.

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!

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'.

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 😂

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.

Yes, me twice this year. First one was one of these Joules sale websites where you pay and nothing ever turns up.
Second one was a business acquaintance of DH who ran an investment business. We gave him some of our money to invest, turns out he's just a brilliant conman and currently being investigated by the police for multimillion pound fraud.

This happened to a friend of mine but they got the money back via the financial ombudsman?? Not sure of the details but worth looking into..

My husband did recently, thankfully they didn't get any money, but he'd been talking to actual paypal on Facebook during a time of crazy amount of stress recently, accidentally clicked someone else and carrier on the conversation and gave his bank details, as soon as he did he said outloud why did I do that and I went through the conversation, we got onto the bank straight away and cancelled that card etc, he had been saving up money to pay for the things causing us stress so it could have been a lot lot worse.

I know a few people locally who were caught out by a parking scam.
The scammers put fake QR codes on the parking meters in the local council car parks and took the parking charges.
Each individual "only" lost the parking fee (and the hassle of dealing with a council parking fine, the council waived these on appeal), so a small amount compared to others, but still a hassle. A warning ended up in the local newspaper.

DF, twice.

1. A friend of his for 40 years asked to borrow £20,000, to be paid back quickly, as his small business was having temporary cash flow problems. He’d done the same to everyone he knew, and stole from clients. We were happy when he was jailed.
2. A long-standing business acquaintance was (surprise) having cash flow problems. DF loaned him £10,000 in exchange for a lien on his house . So did many other people. No one received any money back

it still makes me so angry that they took advantage of his trust

I got scammed out of a grand. The scammers had rung pretending to be my bank. The number they rang me with was my bank’s number so I trusted it. I had just made a large purchase online and assumed they were checking it was genuine.
After i had realised they were scammers and i had hung up on them I rang my bank’s number. Except I hadn’t, I rang the scammers. They told me I couldn’t lock down my account and order a new card until 8am the following morning! They proceeded to attempt to make many many online purchases, which thankfully my bank automatically twigged and froze my card.
DH rang my bank from his phone and I did get my money back eventually, but it very stressful.

My husband was scammed out of £1500 when a tradesman's email was hacked so he was given false bank details to make the payment for some work we had done. He was replying to the same email chain the tradesman had used when discussing dates for the work so there were no red flags at all. He's a pretty cynical lawyer so not easily scammed.

A friend's mum with dementia gave away about £80k to scammers sending her various investment and charity scams. My friend told her they were scams. He even got a police officer friend to come round and tell her, but she wouldn't stop giving money to these people. Eventually my friend moved in with her as her carer and was able to intercept the begging letters in the post and put a stop to it. These people are scum.

Has anyone come across the "Scotland Yard" scam where a detective/pc calls claiming to have a young person in custody for using your card who is claiming to be son/nephew/grandchild. I don't know how it progresses, maybe to give your card numbers for verification or pay bail, but they get verbally abusive when challenged,

That’s exactly how my friend’s MIL lost £30k.

I've had several fraudulent transactions on my credit card account, which my bank have flagged, and contacted me then cancelled. I got all my money back, and have nothing but praise for my bank.

I've very nearly called for a fake "bank call", but realised before I gave away too much info.

DM has been scammed out of £300 on her mobile bill, which EE have consistently refused to believe was not to do with her.

Friend's mum was scammed out of £14K. Well, actually nearer £40k, but a lot was retrieved. A very elaborate and unrealistic plan, that, at one point had her withdrawing £1000s of cash and driving it to a "safe holding depot".

My relative’s partner thought she was talking to a famous singer via WhatsApp and then ended up sending ‘him’ over £10k. It was actually very sad as she genuinely thought she was talking to him plus she has the early stages of dementia.

Some people are just scummy.

Older friend with degenerative condition was targeted during lockdown when tensions with her adult son had developed. It involved her buying a a 'put together package' to take a journey across Europe to ultimately end her life and "set her son free from responsibilities towards her." Theoretically leaving son with a luxury camper, any money left over, and a huge problem of hoarded possessions in storage, resolved for him, by a third party. She thought she was doing the right thing by everyone.

She had difficulties managing credit cards and was already having difficulties with her bank account being in her old married name that she'd stopped using. She was being warned if the long term manager who'd known her when she was married, left, she could have her money frozen or confiscated.
Then they started questioning her about withdrawing money. Probably well intentioned, but she felt the relationship as a customer had changed to one of them trying to control her finances. Then they refused to let her pay in £120 of old pound coins she'd collected in bottles, as she couldn't prove their origin. She was told she could instead pay them in a few at a time, saying she'd just found each batch. Put together it totally shook her trust in the bank.

In 2021 she closed her account taking £35,000 out in cash, telling the bank part truth only as to what for.

Long story short, in the process of trying to help her, I then inadvertently became responsible for the money being mislaid within a storage unit, somewhere!

I've been helping search for it, and we recently found it. Untouched in paper £50 pound notes with original date stamped bands and sealed bank bags, exactly as the bank handed it to her.
All she's told her old bank is she didn't carry out her original plans, which is true, but they've refused to reopen an account, or exchange for plastic notes, claiming money laundering rules prevent it.
She can show the money's origins and that tax has been paid, but they still refused. They've made her feel she's under suspicion of wrong doing, when actually she's just very embarrassed, ashamed and feeling guilty to her son and doesn't want him to find out what she was going to do with "his inheritance."
She's asked another bank and they've said no too.

I'm now trying to convince her to let me take her to the Bank of England with it and all paperwork and tell them everything, and ask for it to be put in her son's account as she wants him to have it, but she's had it put into her head that they might confiscate the money. (I don't know if she might be right.)

Surprise surprise, the other 'friend' still has the luxury camper they've 'held onto for her' and wants to help her...

I was scammed out of 2k for a rental deposit. The estate agents email had been hacked so the emails were coming from a genuine email address, we'd seen the house, they even send a contract when I questioned sending the deposit. But turned out to be a scam. Some absolute scumbags about

Mil lost 80k to a man abroad....
A friend lost 3k in an online scam.

This almost happened to DH. He had an email from his boss asking him to buy Amazon vouchers for all the staff ,send him the codes, and then he would reimburse him. He very nearly did it, but something stopped him and he double checked. Scam

When DS2 lived with me I heard him on a phone call to someone who was claiming to be from a computer company. I think the angle was they say you have a virus, you let them into your pc and they "find" a whole lot of nasties and then sell you software to clean it off. This was a few years ago when online banking wasn't all that common, so I believe selling you the (useless, possibly non-existent) software was the entirety of the scam. I called over to DS, warned him and he cut the call off. A couple of weeks later it turned out XH had actually been caught by the same scam. It figures.

Embarrassingly, not so long ago I very nearly fell for the one that says they're your internet service provider - very cynical at first, as I usually am, but somehow they persuaded me by giving out a few details of the account that they were real. I was going along with what they asked me to do, at first just to see where it was going but after a while I sort of forgot to be wary and carried on doing what I was asked, including changing my account password! Then they asked me to run a program on my pc, and that's when I snapped out of it and said "no, I'm not going to do that". They pleaded with me not to ring off, but of course I did, changed the password to something quite different, and then called the real phone company to report the incident. That was well over a year ago and nothing horrible seems to have come from it, thank goodness. Btw this is a good reason to have more than one phone in your household, so you can call the real service company and bypass the scammers if they're still on the first line.

A colleague was caught by a text on his phone that said his email account had been compromised, please click on this link, and he did. Of course that was the actual point at which the scammers gained access. We laughed at him a little. He said it was early in the morning and he hadn't quite woken up yet. He got through to his service provider shortly afterwards and fortunately regained control of his account with nothing actually lost, but it was a bit of a palaver because of course he had to prove he was not a scammer himself. The scammers had probably had a lot of bites from their phishing expedition, keeping them busy. Bastards.

Remembered my own one, my card got cloned and then in Slough they used to it to pay for a LOT of petrol, somewhere I'd never even been, I rang the police and paypal, paypal refused to believe it wasn't me trying to get out of paying it til I pointed out I live the other end of the country and don't actually even drive, police backed me up with the cctv thankfully 😅

It was not a relative directly, but their financial adviser! Relative’s email was hacked into, and a fake email sent to their FA to say they were going away and would be completely out of email/phone contact for a while, but meanwhile he was to transfer money (a lot!) to a completely new account.

Unbelievably, the FA did it!
We checked with the bloke who manages our funds, and he said there would be at least 6 separate checks before money was ever transferred to a new a/c.
IIRC the relative did eventually get his money back, probably via the FA’s insurance.

Might add that a couple of years ago, a financial journalist who writes for the Sunday Times admitted in the paper that even she’d been caught. These evil bastards are so cunning now, we all need to be super-vigilant.