Amazon scam...is there anything we can do

[Willow4987]

I’m not sure if I’m posting in the right area but hoping someone can help

My recently widowed grandfather has been scammed by a telephone scam claiming to be amazon prime

In order to not be too outing I won’t go into specifics but they managed to clear him out of his savings and take a loan in his name. We’re talking several tens thousands of pounds in total

The bank are taking it through their fraud team, it’s been reported to police and action fraud. Is there anything we can or should be doing?

Tell Amazon

nothing to do with Amazon who probably won't care anyway. You've done all the right things and I hope the bank refund him.

I've had those call and reported them to both Amazon and the police.
Whilst they both talked a good game 7 months on and I'm still getting them
So sorry about your grandfather and hope that the bank sort this.
There was a regulation/law change a while back to do with banks refunding this sort of fraud, Martin Lewis did a good article about it perhaps you could try his website.
Don't hold me to it but I think it's called "push payment fraud "
Hope this helps

Thanks all!! The bank are hopefully going to refund most, if not all, of the savings so fingers crossed it gets sorted

It’s just so horrid to have happened. These people have no heart or morals!

Thanks for the tip about the article - I’ll go and find it

Hi I'm so sorry this happened it's absolutely terrible 😡😡😡

Could I please ask what exactly they asked him to do to be able to get his money? The reason I ask is because my 85 year old grandmother has been getting these calls for months on end, it's never ever when anyone is visiting so we only have her word on what they say which is very vague, she said they ell her her bill is going up to £99 a month but she doesn't have any subscriptions. Thing is she was sharper when she first started getting them and used to just hang up but lately her mind has slowed a LOT and the other day my dad was there when she got one of these phone calls, he was telling her to hang up but she stubbornly ignored him then pressed 1 when they told her to! 🙄😡my worry is she'll keep following the instructions, she knows they're scammers but said she pressed 1 to hear what else they had to say. If I could warm her what happened and how to your poor relative she might listen to me and stop giving them any time

they tried this with me but I don't have Amazon so I give them a mouthful of abuse and told them where too go.

@rainbow1982 so from what we can get out of him they basically called to say he owed just over £100 on a prime account and needed to pay it. They bombarded him with calls (at least 50 to his mobile, let alone the ones to the house) over 48 hours.

He was saying he didn’t understand etc and then that his wife had just died. At this point he was transferred to someone else who then manipulated him into paying the money

From what we can gather he gave them his computer IP address, which they told him to change to one they gave him. He also gave them all of his bank details (he had no awareness that this was dangerous until afterwards). They then asked him to go to the bank to transfer them the money he supposedly owed. At this point they then had everything they needed to be able to access his accounts and take everything

Oh and they were on the phone to him the whole time he was walking to the bank and even in there making the transfer pressuring him and badgering him to check he’s transferred it. Honestly I couldn’t wish for worse things to happen to some people who do things like this to vulnerable old people

Didn't the branch staff pick up on it?

I get those calls ever day. Also BT ( I’m with virgin) telling me my internet will be cut off within the hour. They call everyday despite me telling them to f**k off. I’ve called 101 but nothing......it took me 55 minutes before that call was even answered. It’s heartbreaking to think some vunersble people are manipulated by this. All the calls come from abroad.

We have BT Guardian on our phone (part of the phone and we are with Virgin). Stopped all the calls straight way as no scammer wants to give details in advance to be filtered.

Action fraud won't do anything at all. They are a filing factory

No unfortunately the branch didn’t pick it up.

I’ll have a look at the BT guardian thing and see if we can get him that too

It doesn't sound like push payment fraud as that's usually done via Internet banking but it's clear social engineering fraud. The bank should have procedures in place where the brach staff question payments that are out of character for the customer so I'd be asking why that didn't happen.

Your grandfather sounds very vulnerable at the moment especially with having just lost his wife so there should have been more care from the bank to protect him. If that didn't happen, make a complaint.

I'm really shocked his bank didn't pick up on this. My MIL made a large payment to my DH recently and was interrogated by the bank (even though they could see she was transferring to someone with the same name).

A 99 pound payment to Amazon wouldn't necessarily be seen as anything out of the ordinary by a bank.