A WOMAN who watched a phone scam crook steal £400 from her bank account says four words he said still haunt her to this day.
Wendy Falconer, 63, fell victim to a cruel scam while she was caring for her husband in Tywyn, Wales.
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She picked up a call from who she thought was her bank – but instead it was a man who talked her out of hundreds of pounds.
But the 63-year-old said the worst part was the way the scammer spoke to her and mocked her.
The fraudster’s words “you are so thick” still replay in her head.
Wendy told BBC: “He was laughing, saying I was stupid, his language was unbelievable. And he said if you’d like to go to your app now, you’ll see me take your money.
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“Why did he need to do that? He’d already got the money.
“He was laughing so much at me and the language was just awful, calling me names.
“He said ‘you’re so thick, you’re so stupid’. I was just in shock.”
The Shropshire woman added: “I didn’t sleep that night, because all I could hear was his voice, laughing at me and this abuse.”
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Wendy said the man had sounded “so professional” until that moment.
She now knows disguising a phone number as a bank’s, or similar, as spoofing.
I worked three jobs to save a £20k house deposit by the age of 18 – but I lost it all in seconds during a phone call
Experts have now warned people to not get caught in the same trap as Wendy.
Ofcom said: “Never give out your personal information in response to an incoming call, or rely upon the caller ID as the sole means of identification, particularly if the caller asks you to carry out an action which might have financial consequences.”
Det Con Rachel Roberts from North Wales Police, which is investigating the crime, said it was a common scam.
She added that it was not just banks’ phone numbers that could be mimicked.
Roberts said: “We also see victims being contacted by telephone with suspects claiming to be from Amazon and quite often other utility companies, Microsoft, maybe even Apple.
“A few victims have reported to us that they’ve had phone calls purporting to be from their GP, or from their local pharmacy, asking for that victim to provide bank details so that they can pay for their prescriptions or pay for a delivery service.”
It’s not unusual for people to get scammed.
How to protect yourself from scams
BY keeping these tips in mind, you can avoid getting caught up in a scam:
- Firstly, remember that if something seems too good to be true, it normally is.
- Check brands are “verified” on Facebook and Twitter pages – this means the company will have a blue tick on its profile.
- Look for grammatical and spelling errors; fraudsters are notoriously bad at writing proper English. If you receive a message from a “friend” informing you of a freebie, consider whether it’s written in your friend’s normal style.
- If you’re invited to click on a URL, hover over the link to see the address it will take you to – does it look genuine?
- To be on the really safe side, don’t click on unsolicited links in messages, even if they appear to come from a trusted contact.
- Be careful when opening email attachments too. Fraudsters are increasingly attaching files, usually PDFs or spreadsheets, which contain dangerous malware.
- If you receive a suspicious message then report it to the company, block the sender and delete it.
- If you think you’ve fallen for a scam, report it to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 or use its online fraud reporting tool.
One woman recently told how she was catfished by a scammer pretending to be Gary Barlow who told her he loved her and asked her for money.
Janet Smith, 62, genuinely believed she was talking to the Take That singer for about a week after she added him as a friend on Facebook.
But after the fraudster bombarded her with compliments and messages, even saying he had “split up”, Janet grew suspicious and eventually convinced him to reveal his true identity.
The cheat admitted he was actually a 24-year-old from Nigeria.
Elsewhere, Taylor Swift fans have been warned to take care when nabbing tickets.
More than £1million could already have been lost to fraudsters pretending to offer UK gig tickets, a bank warned.
More than 600 Lloyds customers have reported being scammed over Eras Tour dates.
Most are fooled by ads, posts or listings on social media.
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They pay upfront for tickets which never arrive and the scammers vanish.
The average amount lost between July 2023 to this March was £332.
Fraud website used to fleece Brits taken down
AN ONLINE fraud website used by cyber crooks to fleece victims on an industrial scale has been smashed by cops, it can be revealed today.
The UK-run scammer site LabHost provided tools for tricksters across the globe to set up phishing trawls luring computer users into revealing personal information and bank details.
Up to 70,000 people in Britain fell victim to the site’s scams and 480,000 card numbers and 64,000 PIN’s were obtained from across the world.
A Met Police-led investigation – code-named Operation Stargrew – into the site has led to 37 arrests across the UK, in London, Essex, and Manchester and Luton airports, as well as abroad.
Criminals paid LabHost between £200 and £300 a month for membership so they could glean information to defraud people.
Hackers were able to choose from existing sites or request their own dedicated pages replicating those of trusted brands including banks, healthcare agencies and postal services to con victims.
LabHost even provided templates and an easy to follow tutorial allowing would-be fraudsters with limited IT knowledge to use the service.
At the end of the tutorial, a robotic voice told fraudsters: “Stay safe and good spamming.”
By the beginning of this year, more than 40,000 fraudulent sites had been created through LabHost and 2,000 users were registered.
The site has received just under £1 million in payments from criminal users since it was set up in 2021 by UK villains.
Detectives have contacted up to 25,000 victims in the UK to tell them their data has been compromised.
Details of the arrests had been kept secret for operational reasons.
