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

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!!

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.

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!

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

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.

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 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.

They showed a simple variation of this on an old episode of The Real Hustle.

One of the hustlers - wearing a hi-viz jacket and holding a clipboard - set himself up in a random car park and approached people as they arrived and parked. He told them that the machines were currently out of action (I think he'd covered them over with bin bags), so they were having to take manual payments from customers in the meantime.

Loads of people just gave him cash, assumed that they'd legitimately paid and left to get on with their day.

Had it not been staged that way as a warning for TV, imagine the chaos for both the victims and also the actual car park owner who would have issued countless fines for non-payment and had them all contested.

Maybe I'm being stupid, but I really cannot understand how online payments can't be fully traced nowadays, so that there's always a record of where the money ends up.

It's not like a cash-based scam, which, of course, wouldn't be traceable.

Or is it just that it goes abroad to certain countries that don't care (or even are in on it and somehow tax it or take a cut)?

When a bank refunds your money after a scam, do they manage to retrieve it or do they just have to bear the loss themselves?

I know of someone, where a door to door salesman was about to receive payment for a new conservatory roof before the work was even started.
There was nothing wrong with roof !
Luckily, this was caught in time & the salesman was sent packing.

The same person was also quoted an enormous price for a burglar alarm system. This salesman was sent away too !

My elderly aunt lost her house to a romance scammer. She sent him over £200,000 over a couple of years. When it eventually all came out, she still refused to accept that it was a scam and believes that this ‘man’ she has never even met is the love of her life. It’s heartbreaking really that someone can be that lonely.

DS’s ex GF was also conned out of £600 in an HMRC scam. I was surprised she fell for it because I’d assumed that young people are more switched on to scams.

I believe that they also have targets to reach and have threats put over them to reach them .

Almost certainly. If people run a 'business' like that, they're not going to be decent, fair, reasonable sorts.

I never understand why the people who work so hard coming up with the brilliant, sophisticated scams don't just channel their considerable skills and intelligence into a legitimate business.

Yes, you'd have to pay tax, but no more having to worry about getting busted, covering your tracks, risking long jail sentences, even just being able to be proud and open about the nature of your business and how clever you've been in establishing it, and gaining massive respect from your community.

My widowed childless Great Uncle was scammed out of his life savings by the local Jehovah Witness group in 1970's. They pestered him relentlessly until he changed his will. Family and his solicitor desperately tried to warn him but they had effectively brain washed him.

MIL who had dementia was constantly hassled by big well known charities, not a scam but it was bloody obvious she didn't have capacity to understand what she was signing up for.

I've not been scammed yet but I don't think I'd be immune to it.

The thing that confuses me is that how are more people not tight with money?

Even when I was in the first flush of love with DH, I will not have leant him large sums of money. I was simply too tight, my money is for me. Why are people so generous with these men and
women?!

lots on morning live this week about scams on BBC. Theres a quiz online to see how well you would do and what you know about scams. 15 questions!

Unusual one and I am not sure I'll be able to explain it right but very recently, a few weeks ago, my friend and her friend, who also happens to be a tattoo artist.

There was a large event in London (we're in the North) where tattoo artists could rent a space inside a building, to show off their artistry to potential customers. They could also book in any number of customers throughout the day to demonstrate their work, and potential customers could buy a ticket to either just go and look around and book in for future or potentially get a tattoo from an artist that day, OR they could find an artist online before the event and book in for the day of it.

My friend and her tattoo artist friend decided to make a day/night of it and my friend booked with her, not sure if she also had other bookings or intended to just show up and hopefully gain further customers. When they arrived, the people on the door looked for the artist's booking and said 'oh no, not another one!'

Turns out that someone, somehow had been taking multiple, hundreds of bookings from artists and had pocketed the money and not booked them into the system. Some artists who'd had multiple bookings made had lost 100s or more £. Every artist who'd been a victim had lost their booking fee, and customers had lost their deposits for their tattoos. My friend lost a few £100, I am not sure how much her artist friend had lost, and as far as I know nothing could be done about it. Looked like an 'in house' job, but perhaps not. They both came straight back on the train as the artist was devastated and too upset to hang around, money but also the feeling of letting people down.

DH was scammed last year. He'd just started a new job, had an email from "his boss" asking him to buy up Amazon/supermarket gift vouchers and send him the details. He lost about £1,000 before cottoning on - the scammer asked him to go to an Apple store and buy iTunes vouchers - the store assistant said we don't sell these instore anymore due to all the scams....penny dropped.

I honestly couldn't believe he fell for it, but I think he was so desperate to do the right thing in a new job, so wasn't thinking straight. And is a very honest person, so forgets that not everyone else in the world is the same. Fortunately, the company met him half way, and paid him some of the money he lost (seeing as they had spoofed the boss's email address) but he was so ashamed. What was he thinking?! It came right after a long period of redundancy, so we really didn't have the cash to spare either.

I remember that program. People believe anyone if they are wearing hi-vis and holding a clipboard!

My mum was dating a stone Mason. He took the money for my grandfather's headstone and then ghosted her.

My Mum was nearly scammed by a fake bank call saying someone had cloned her card.....said they were going to send a police officer round to pick the card up etc etc. Luckily, I'd heard of the scam and stopped it but it made her ill for days and she couldn't sleep because she was scared someone was going to turn up on the doorstep.
My SILs parents are money grabbers. They fell for the Nigerian scam of "we need someone with your surname to accept 10 million pounds and we'll let you keep half for helping us". Told them it was a scam but they wouldn't have it! They even went out viewing huge houses and new cars to spend it on! The scammers persuaded them to buy a fax machine to send all the paperwork through to prove it was 'real'. The scammers then said that they needed a payment of £25000 to release the funds but they'd get it back with the rest of the 5 million. Well, they didn't have £25k so when they told the scammers that, they (obviously) never heard from them again. But if they'd had £25k they would have sent it if they thought they'd get 5 million back! Like I said, they're money grabbers and all they saw was pound signs!

I always ask which kid this is. They then come back and say 'the eldest' or 'the youngest'. Suckers! I only have 1 child.

I LOVED that programme.
Even though it was so, I don't know, clunky?

Didn't someone once walk into a famous museum and take a painting from the wall and just walk out? Nobody questioned him because he was wearing a hi-viz jacket?!

Yes. An elderly friend who wasn't very technical.

She had signed up to online banking going back many years now. She had had a problem with a payment and her computer was playing up.

She made a genuine call to her bank and was happy with the outcome.

Then the following day a call came in on her land line and she answered it. It was a scammer who said he was phoning about her computer.

I think it was just bad timing as it wasn't anything to do with the bank but she made the assumption that the bank had told them to get in touch.

She then asked 'did the bank ask you to call' and they said yes!

She was completely taken in and she lost tens of thousands as they took over her computer.

Scary scary stuff.

Sadly, yes - an elderly neighbour who fell for the "We'll tarmac your drive" followed by endless other fake issues they'd "just noticed" and persuaded her to have done lest the house fall down

That was £12,000 down the (actually fully functioning) drain and she never really recovered from it