Urgent alert to ALL mobile banking customers over new ‘trick’ that drains your account in seconds – don’t get caught out
SCAMMERS are using new tricks to con mobile bankers out of tens of thousands of pounds.
The crooks clone the bank’s phone number, telling customers to double check it on Google, and use the same hold music.
And they pretend to be from the fraud team when they call.
One jeweller lost £50,000 when he was tricked into giving his details to a scammer after they pretended to be from Barclays.
The businessman, who is in his 70s, said the long-established family-run jewellers is still recovering from the financial shock.
The scam took place in April 2024, when the jeweller received a phone call from someone claiming to be ‘Andrew’ from Barclays, who warned him of unusual activity on his account.
He was told that a payment of £18,123 had been paid to Energy One Limited. The number that they called him on was cloned.
“I checked it was a genuine Barclays number, and they asked me to confirm my overdraft limit for security reasons,” said the jeweller.
“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.”
Believing he was now speaking to ‘Charlie Adams’ from the Barclays fraud team, the victim was instructed to log in to his business bank accounts on his desktop computer.
From there he unknowingly downloaded AnyDesk, a programme that gives third parties access to your computer.
“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.”
The fraudsters had taken £48,451.78 from two accounts, money that was desperately needed to keep the business going.
How to protect yourself from fraud and cyber crime
If you believe you have been victim of a scam call 0300 123 2040.
- Do not give any personal information (name, address, bank details, email or phone number) to organisations or people before verifying their credentials.
- Make sure your computer has up-to-date anti-virus software and a firewall installed. Ensure your browser is set to the highest level of security and monitoring to prevent malware issues and computer crimes.
- Remember that banks and financial institutions will not send you an email asking you to click on a link and confirm your bank details. Do not trust such emails, even if they look genuine
- Destroy and preferably shred receipts with your card details on and post with your name and address on.
- Be extremely wary of post, phone calls or emails offering you business deals out of the blue. If an offer seems too good to be true, it probably is. Always question it.
Source; Action Fraud
He immediately called the Barclays fraud team, and was asked to report the crime to Action Fraud and get a crime number, which he did.
When Barclays offered the jeweller just £100 in compensation, he turned to National Fraud Helpline solicitors.
The no-win, no-fee law firm has, so far, recovered £25,650 of his money from the bank after arguing that Barclays should have spotted the unusual activity on his bank account and prevented the payments.
Lena Abuagla, a lawyer at National Fraud Helpline, 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.
“We will be taking the jeweller’s case to the Financial Ombudsman to help recover the rest of the money.”
National Fraud Helpline solicitors say no bank would ask you download software that allows them to take control of your computer.