National Fraud Helpline’s issued a warning in the national media about scammers using new tactics when they pretend to be from a bank’s fraud department.
The convincing scam by the fraudsters includes:
- Using the same telephone hold music as the bank;
- Cloning the bank’s phone number and telling the victim he could double check it’s correct on Google;
- Asking victims to confirm details such as their overdraft limit.
We highlighted the new scammers tactics after helping a jeweller recover £25,000 who fell victim to the fraud.
As part of the fraud-awareness campaign, The Sun reported on our case of a businessman, in his 70s, who lost £50,000 after giving his bank details to someone pretending to be from Barclays.
In April, last year, the jeweller answered a call from a man claiming to be ‘Andrew’ from the well-known UK bank, who suggested that there has been suspicious activity on his account.
The scammer alleged that £18,123 had been paid to a company called Energy One Limited.
Our story also appeared in Birmingham Live, which reported the anonymous jeweller saying: “I checked it was a genuine Barclays number, and they asked me to confirm my overdraft limit for security reasons.
“They even used the same horrible hold music that Barclays play, which I’ve heard so many times before in legitimate circumstances.
“There seemed no reason to think it was not them.”
After being put in contact with ‘Charlie Adams’ from Barclays, he was told to log into his online banking.
He accidentally downloaded AnyDesk during the call – a software which is designed to give third parties control of your device.
“They said the screen would go blank, and then that was the end of it,” he said.
“Nothing more happened after that, and I assumed they must have sorted it out.
“But during the night, I was lying awake thinking ‘this is a strange thing that’s been going on’.
“I got up in the middle of the night, went downstairs, logged into the accounts, and saw that they had left a few pence in them – I was pretty devastated, and wondered what had gone wrong.”
He was horrified to discover that £48,451.78 had been taken from two separate accounts.
When he contacted the real Barclays fraud team, they offered him just £100 in compensation for the fraud.
After enlisting the help of National Fraud Helpline solicitors, our firm helped him to get back £25,650 of his lost funds.
We argued that Barclays should have flagged up the strange activity on his account and took further action to stop the payments.
Lena Abuagla, from National Fraud Helpline solicitors, said: “Scammers will use every trick in the book to convince victims that they are genuine.
“Using the same hold music as the bank involves a lot of planning.
“This was a very sophisticated scam; we have so far recovered half of the lost sums and are determined to get the rest of the money back.”
The story was also picked up in a variety of publications including SME Magazine and the Professional Jeweller trade publication.
Have you lost money to a scam? Contact National Fraud Helpline. Call 0333 0033218 or fill out our Claim Form.