When nuisance calls become a lot more sinister
An enexpected phone call can be a pain - or lead to financial disaster
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Your support makes all the difference.There are many of you who – like us – are really fed-up with nuisance calls, judging by the response to my colleague Sean O’Grady’s column last week on how to deal with the pests. Some of you proposed amusing ways to deal with the unwanted callers, or simply suggested methods for keeping them on the line so they couldn’t target more vulnerable people. Others simply took the opportunity to vent their anger about the seemingly non-stop menace.
But it was other news this week that caused me to reflect on how such unwanted calls can lead to real heartbreak.
A gang of phone scammers was convicted at the Old Bailey of conspiring to commit fraud, after being caught in a massive phone scam. They rang unsuspecting people pretending to be police officers.
Distressingly, they targeted older, vulnerable people with their scam. The court heard how victims in their 70s, 80s and 90s – from Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Bedfordshire, London and Kent – were called by men claiming to be investigating a bank fraud.
To gain their victims’ trust, they told them to call the police or their bank to check about the fraud. But in a very common and sneaky trick, the crooks simply stayed on the line so that when people presumed they were calling someone else, they were actually speaking to the same person.
Once the villains had confirmed the scam, they then persuaded their victims to hand over card details or transfer cash to a so-called safe account, which was run by one of the scammers. They stole around £600,000 before being caught.
One victim, 73-year-old Patricia Burnham, handed over £135,000 before she realised her mistake. “I just felt devastated, stupid, embarrassed – you know, how could I have been taken in?” she told the BBC.
But it can happen to anyone, especially if they’re caught off guard by shock news on the phone. And that’s something to bear in mind when you get a nuisance call. You may be comfortable dealing with what seems like a fraud attempt, but if it is a scam then you can help stop the villains targeting others and stealing their cash by giving the details to the police.
You can report attempted scams online at actionfraud.police.uk.
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