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 know someone who fell for the scam where the bank calls and says there's fraudulent activity on your account, do you have another bank that we can send your funds to to keep them safe? So they gave them their actual bank details to make that transfer and obviously all the money was swiftly taken from the account and not deposited in. I think they actually got it back in the end though. I've since seen alerts on my banking app saying that they will never ask you for information on your other banks accounts so I assume that was a common one.

I almost fell for one from Amex as they called from the right number and were saying all the right things. Then, they called me by the wrong name and a little later asked me how often I check my Amex app and if I have spending alerts on. Combined, those fairly small things seemed very suss to me so I hung up. I called Amex to report and they weren't too bothered 😆

I also almost fell for one of those DPD ones where you have to pay £1.99 to rebook your delivery. It was 6am and I was bleary-eyed from my alarm. I'm sure they try to get you like that by sending the message late enough that you'll see it first thing in the morning. Took me a moment to realise I wasn't expecting a parcel and if I was why would I have to pay for them missing the delivery slot? The fake websites they create are so convincing though - especially on your phone where the url is less obvious.

My favourite was a man trying to buy a laptop from me on Gumtree who just kept telling me he had sent the money to my paypal and I was just not looking in the right place when I repeatedly replied that there was no money in my paypal so he was lying. That one didn't go very far.

I've been "scammed" by cowboy builders. Makes me sick thinking about it, I did everything right and they still fucked me over. Bastards.

You have to be very careful with builders. We needed to replace a shower stall during COVID-19 and found a woman-owned home improvement company in our area. She'd been in business for 25 years and had great reviews. I checked with our town's building inspector and he also was very impressed with the quality of her work. So we had her do the shower, including a full re-tiling and new plumbing fixtures, and she did a brilliant job. The blokes who worked for her were lovely, too. She's going to redo our kitchen in January.

I also know somebody scammed by Google Play card emails. He's a vulnerable and lonely disabled man whose capacity is questionable, but he wouldn't be convinced by anyone. These scammers are a disgrace

@GnomeDePlume ah the Donnie deepfake was about him needing £10k to escape a cult 🤣. If you are in the uk I think it’s the last episode of series 3 on iplayer

my moving home example was around scammers are more successful when people are at the most stressed when moving house etc and there are loads of things going on at once. Good luck for your son and his move!

Not personally but my mums next door neighbour was scammed out of many thousands by a romance scam, I think the man had scammed a few women and ended up in court for it iirc.

Yes we fell for this or my dh did. I was very annoyed with him

We lost £200. It was a lot of money at the time

I have noticed that people can be intelligent and critical in one direction but quite credulous in another. With the additional problem that they are so used to their intelligence being reliable that they can be almost impossible to challenge.

Just chatting to my (elderly) mum. Someone knocked on her door today talking about cables and speed in her area

she felt sorry for him as it was cold and raining. Told him a fair few details till he asked for her mobile phone to check the download speed on her WiFi. This is a new one for me people asking for your mobile at the door

she told him thanks but no thanks but is still feeling mean by telling him no

No astute or savvy patent would fall for it though. It’s pretty obvious it’s not your child’s way of talking reasonably quickly. I honestly don’t understand how anyone would possibly fall for it!

My mum (who's now 80) got scammed last year.

It was someone who called her number with a story about their screen being broken (hence they weren't able to text) and needing to borrow money to get a new phone. Despite them not knowing my name, or (as far as I can tell) claiming to be her daughter, she seems to have assumed it was me, and was so keen to help me in my hour of need that she went into her online banking and transferred something like £6k to them (ignoring the bank's warning messages)

I have never ever asked her for money, or borrowed any amount from her - never mind a small fortune of that size - so I was baffled by how easily she was duped. She didn't try calling me back on my phone at the time - don't know why not - but luckily called my brother, who had the presence of mind to contact me and ask if I'd been in touch with her saying I needed money for something.

I was so angry at the whole situation that I rang the police (in Scotland - Action Fraud only covers England & Wales), who took it seriously and even sent an officer out to talk to her. The bank actually refunded her money, thankfully (although I'm not sure why they felt they had to do this).

The only good thing about this whole sorry incident is that she's unlikely to fall for that sort of scam again. But rest assured that it certainly does happen, and people keep falling for it. Before this I'd thought she was quite savvy - she's been travelling all over the world and dealt with lots of issues - but whatever they said seems to have been very effective

My friend was very drunk and he used his fingerprint for everything security wise on his phone. He doesn't remember the specifics but I can imagine the guy pretended the phone had been locked so my friend would use his fingerprint again, when in reality he was logging into the banking app for this guy. The drink would also have messed up friend's (already terrible) perception of time.

From what my friend went onto learn, this was a pretty common scam in soho. A good looking bloke would target gay men who were drunk, get them more drunk (he bought my friend several drinks) and then get access to their phones. If this was then reported to the police, the man would claim he gave them cash/they agreed to send the money/was paying for services rendered.

The scammer only needs to get lucky sometimes. An astute or savvy parent may not fall for it but an elderly or distracted/confused parent might.

My elderly DM would have been vulnerable to the mobile phone scam. The desire to be useful and 'the one who helped' her adult DD.

The mobile phone scam is also a 'thin end of the wedge' scam. Once the scammer has the new number lodged in the victim's phone as 'Gnome' they are much more able to persuade the victim to transfer more and more money.

I read that there are HUGE "scam factories" in India and other places and in order to scam 1 person they make on average 250000 calls but its worth it from a business point of view.

I was but luckily only £50! It was an advert for Taylor Swift tickets a d I stupidly didn't realise it was a scam, sent £50 as a deposit and that was the last I heard.

Yes, a very switched on streetwise friend was scammed out of £12k by someone pretending to be from his bank's fraud team.

I had to jump on when my mum was dating.

Met a really nice German guy, chatted every day, very brief video chat (bad quality)... Then came the story of his daughter needing a laptop for his studies, pay cheque not arriving, illness etc.

I sat her down, and we went through his dating profile. Virtually all of it was copied from other profiles, the language was poor, the picture was found elsewhere, the address to send the laptop wasn't even in the area, a whole long list.

Managed to stop about a thousand pounds going out the door!

"Neighbour’s dad sent loads of money to an animal charity. A real charity but they kept sending letters begging for more cash and he donated about 50000 pounds in the end, his savings. Not a scam but not right in my book."

Any charity that badgers me for more gets cut off - looking at you Guide Dogs. By way of contrast, Smile and Water Aid happily accept £2 or £3 a month by DD and never ask for anything else - so I will happily carry in giving tot them.

I had a call this morning allegedly from Microsoft saying that my net work was open to abuse and did I have a computer and a husband or children . I said I had none of those and the line went dead . The caller was from India and she knew my name .

My DH works in IT and finds these calls hilarious. If he wants to talk to someone at Microsoft for tech support, he has to call them, wait on hold for 20-30 minutes, and then let them charge his credit card $250 before the call even starts.

Came across this story of Daisy the AI granny today and immediately and thought of this thread.

news.virginmediao2.co.uk/o2-unveils-daisy-the-ai-granny-wasting-scammers-time/

I’ve had lots of small scams, recently bought trainers from a website that turned out to be fake and from china, I’ve also had a mobile phone account set up in my name, we were also conned out of £2k by a tradesman who didn’t do the work and left us in a right mess.