Business banking news review: week ending 9 April 2015
An elderly pensioner ended up losing a massive £15,000 from their bank accounts after criminals scammed the victim over the telephone.
The 78 year old man from Stranraer received a call from an individual masquerading as a branch representative informing him that his accounts had possibly been compromised. The criminal boldly instructed the pensioner to transfer the funds from his current account and savings account to a ‘new’ one, only to have it be in actuality the scammer’s account instead.
To make matters worse, this is actually the second scam of its kind in the region, with another victim being fleeced for £12,000 through the scam. in Dumfries and Galloway. Police Scotland has put the word out about the rash of criminal activity, asking for anyone who has been contacted to report what happened to the authorities regardless of what transpired during the call. At the same time police warned the public to be incredibly wary of anyone ringing them up out of the blue like that, as it’s likely to be an impostor looking to make some quick cash off an unsuspecting victim.
For what it’s worth, I’m both saddened by this news and also not surprised in the least. Scammers routinely target personal and business bank account holders by phone in attempts to wheedle some cash from them, and more often than not they rely on credulous pensioners as prime targets because it’s relatively easy to dupe them into thinking something is amiss with their bank accounts. It’s a cruel, dastardly plan that unfortunately works more often than not, and it makes me feel terribly for those individuals victimised in such a way.
So how do we combat this? The best way is to educate all banking customers that, even in events of financial urgency, a bank rarely contacts a customer directly by just ringing them up. No, in almost all occasions a letter arrives by post informing an account holder of an issue that needs to be addressed; this is done expressly to avoid such issues like bank employees being impersonated over the phone by criminal scum like the one that fleeced these poor folks.