What a pathetic country we live in. Just had yet another purported call from my ISP to say they have been trying to get in touch with me and unless I press 1 now my internet connection will be cut off because of illegal activity on my service.
This isn't somebody offering rip-off service, it's attempted theft, as are the two SMS's I have had from "Lloyds" this week about new payees being set up on my bank account.
I got a new landline in our rented house in 2019 which I have not given to anybody and literally the only people who call that number are criminals
Do any of these people ever get their collars felt? Are they all abroad and beyond reach? What about the networks allowing them to continue, it must be possible to eradicate the calls even if criminals can't be locked up? How difficult can it be to catch them via the bank accounts they are transferring people's money to?
Herts Constabulary are forever issuing warnings about this. Have they caught anybody? Are they even trying? Do we just have to accept this as we do the weather?
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I don't consider that a phone call from an attempted scammer makes this a pathetic country in which to live.
Get a grip of yourself.
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They do get caught sometimes. This is quite a satisfying story, if you have the time.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=le71yVPh4uk
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I just watched the video CC linked to. What amazed me was how he got into their systems - an amazing piece of detective work. I'll watch Panorama on catch-up this week.
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>> I don't consider that a phone call from an attempted scammer makes this a pathetic
>> country in which to live.
>>
>> Get a grip of yourself.
We have bigger crooks in the government. Scam callers are small beer by comparison, so it must be the last straw phenomenon.
It's not the call, it's the fact that we just accept it.
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If it didn't work then they wouldn't do it.
Disgusting as they are, ridiculous are the people who fall for it despite so many warnings.
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>> If it didn't work then they wouldn't do it.
>>
>> Disgusting as they are, ridiculous are the people who fall for it despite so many
>> warnings.
Blame the victims? My mother could have done so easily, when she was suffering from vascular dementia.
Confidence tricksters operate by being plausible.
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>>Blame the victims?
I am not sufficiently worried about modern political correctness to be bothered about pointing out the stupidity of some who are caught by this.
Of course some like your Mother, and mine for that matter, are to be protected. But others are just plain dumb. And I suspect that there are considerably more dumb ones.
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SWMBO has a telly on most of the time these days and there has been a daytime morning programme about people being scammed out of tens of thousands by someone distant who they think is in love with them. We haven't sat and watched it but it is amazing how gullible people are, and even when confronted with loads of evidence some still won't believe it.
Often they are pretty ordinary looking older people and the scammer is posing as a young fit looking person. I don't know how initial contact was made, probably through a dating site, which would imply that the victim may be somewhat lonely and, I suppose, vulnerable.
I'd like to think I wouldn't fall for a scam but there was an incident a few years back when I could have been a victim. A respectable bloke knocked on the door and offered three reasonably cheap car services at one of the local major garages. I showed some interest but also some doubt and he gave me an 0800 number to check there and then with the authorities that he was licensed to be door to door calling in the area. That checked out OK and I went ahead and booked £100 or £200 or something of services - I don't remember the amount or what I paid at the time. When SWMBO came in I told her what I'd done and she said the authorising phone number was probably part of the scam. Didn't even occur to me at the time. However it was all legit and I got three cheap services.... :-)
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It's not so different from the two water board workers that need to find a leak in your house and so need you to stand in the kitchen watching the tap.
For as many years as I can remember people have been told not to allow people in their house without being sure they are who they say they are. The police and education authorities never managed to stop that one either.
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>> >>Blame the victims?
>>
>> I am not sufficiently worried about modern political correctness to be bothered about pointing out
>> the stupidity of some who are caught by this.
>>
>> Of course some like your Mother, and mine for that matter, are to be protected.
>> But others are just plain dumb. And I suspect that there are considerably more dumb
>> ones.
>>
One at work recently was a flagged transaction sent to our fraud team before being authorised.
It was obviously a scam. Payee name and account names totally different. Account opened recently amongst other indicators that I won't go into.
Our customer was called. Told the payment of nearly £100k would not be authorised because we believed the transaction was a scam. Customer insisted it wasn't. Basically advance payment by bank transfer for an expensive item from a dealer. Customer showed us the website he was buying the product from. It was very slick, set up from abroad. No contact details except for a mobile number. Co Reg number and VAT numbers were not real.
We got the police involved under the "Banking Protocol". Police turned up at the customer's home. Explained the issue and customer still wouldn't believe them.
Customer closed his account and went elsewhere. You cant help some people.
Old fogies who are more trusting / have lost some marbles - I have a lot more sympathy for.
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I suspect the answer, as in the OP, is that they're abroad and beyond reach.
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Some of these are ridiculous.
e.g. how many times do you need to be told, never tell anybody your PIN?
www.fscs.org.uk/news/fraud/top-5-financial-scams/
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We were posting about this back in February. It's exactly the same thing, in principle.
www.car4play.com/forum/post/index.htm?v=e&t=28761&m=624285
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An vague acquaintance of mine, from a long time ago, got scammed a few years ago by a Russian bride. After a few short years marriage she divorced him and took half his house.
Blindingly obvious what would happen as twice a year she returned home to visit her ‘elderly relatives’. And sent them money on a monthly basis.
My ex told him vehemently to get a pre nup in place. He wouldn’t, blinded by lust.
Idiot
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I knew of two guys in their 50s who married eastern European much younger women. I was suspicious of motives at the time.
I've lost touch with one but it was going OK last I heard, and the other does send money back and goes back to visit family regularly but has been married now for more than 10 years I'd guess - I believe quite happily. Maybe that wasn't the initial intention but it's how it's worked out.
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I'm with Manatee. It seems like a constant barrage of scammers. But I will divide those into 'legitimate' telephone marketers and the out and out scams.
However you look at say the 118118 type set up. The amount they charge to connect a call is legitimised theft yet are allowed to advertise freely on mainstream media.
For those that are a bit more switched on to the ways of the world they should be easy to dodge but there are a generation out there who are far more trusting and easy targets.
I do believe there is far more the communications companies could do. There must be an element of traceability of these crooks.
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It's not restricted to this country, it's a global industry and it's perpetrated from outside this country.
So how that makes the UK a "pathetic country" is completely beyond me.
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We had a computer company as a client.
A scammer set up a bank account in a very similar personal name - think Derek Ell.
He then wrote to a number of customers to advise them of changed bank details. The letter had some obvious typos.
One customer paid nearly quarter of a million in to his account. It was noticed promptly because our customers payment terms were very short and they called the customer to ask where payment was and they said that they had paid it.
Luckily we were able to recover it.
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>> A scammer set up a bank account in a very similar personal name - think
>> Derek Ell.
>>
Would just like to clarify that the company like Derek Ell was never a client - just an example of the audacity of the real name change made.
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>> I'm with Manatee. It seems like a constant barrage of scammers. But I will divide
>> those into 'legitimate' telephone marketers and the out and out scams.
>>
>> I do believe there is far more the communications companies could do. There must be
>> an element of traceability of these crooks.
>>
Problem is the Govt are full of scammers as well - look at all the PPE contracts to mates or the ferry contract to business associates.
The Govt just does not see fraud as a serious issue. The cost to the UK economy is estimated to be over £100 billion and yet all we have is Action Fraud with the police not funded or authorised to do anything about it save for high profile cases.
I have reported out and out financial crimes to our reporting officer and I know these have been referred on to the authorities but the fraudulent businesses are still in operation.
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>>I have reported out and out financial crimes to our reporting officer and I know these have been referred on to the authorities but the fraudulent businesses are still in operation
Perhaps it is your definition of scam or fraud which is the stumbling block? I don't really see the government as being "full of scammers".
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>> >>I have reported out and out financial crimes to our reporting officer and I know
>> these have been referred on to the authorities but the fraudulent businesses are still in
>> operation
>>
>> Perhaps it is your definition of scam or fraud which is the stumbling block? I
>> don't really see the government as being "full of scammers".
>>
www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/national-audit-office-investigating-uk-government-covid-contracts-after-cronyism-accusations/
We have an obligation to report all financial crimes. Failure to report can result in a personal fine and prison sentence.
I have reported financial crimes as is my obligation and I have followed these up with our reporting office who screen all of them before reporting appropriate cases to the authorities.
I have checked up on the ones I have submitted and they have all been passed on. Some were for significant frauds against the Govt. Others were for much worse activities including the despicable act of people trafficking. A couple have been for money laundering.
BTW our FCO team includes retired police detectives who have experience of dealing with financial crime and because the area I deal with is specialist business finance they often call up for clarification and I have been called in for interview by them so that they have all the details, file originals etc.
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>>I'm with Manatee.
Insofar as it makes the UK a pathetic country, I am not.
In Chile we don't get this type of scam. I don't really know why unless it is because it's a Spanish speaking country making it a less easy target for India, China, Nigeria, wherever.
The type of scam we do get is a little more scary and it has happened to me.
You get a phone call with a child screaming "Mama, Mama, help me" in the background. In Spanish, obviously. And then a voice tells you that they have taken your child from school and you must bank transfer them a sum of money or they will rape / kill / torture the child.
They then say that if you hang up the phone / put them on hold / speak to anyone else / etc. they will carry out their threats.
I don't remember how much it was now, about £1,000 I think.
I was visited by PDI afterwards (civilian criminal investigation police). Apparently these people con some old dear into giving them access to their bank account and it is that account into which they ask you to transfer the money. And of course they are waiting at the bank to withdraw it immediately.
Quite terrifying, but my daughter was off school sick that day, so it didn't work. I doubt it would work anyway because if one of mine was scared they'd be screaming in English, but one would have doubt.
And if they do it at break/lunch time it would probably take a school 15 minutes to work out for sure if they still had your child or not. Certainly to have absolute certainty.
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>> The type of scam we do get is a little more scary and it has
>> happened to me.
>>
Awful! That is truly evil.
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One we stumbled across was to do with fruit machines.
Many are electronic now.
A criminal gang threatened the family of a programmer of one manufacturer to code the machine to pay out on a certain pressing of the buttons - think of the "SIMON" computer game from the 80s.
They then went around the pubs emptying the machines without their usual practice of smashing them up.
The abnormal pay out statistics were adjusted as well so it took a little time to notice that the machines were paying out too much.
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I had a bit of an addiction problem with fruit machines in my teens and early twenties. I do remember one which, if you waited for a particular sequence of the lights flashing on the panel above the game after a particular sequence had landed on the reels then pressed start at the right time it would pay out the jackpot. It became well known at the time and they changed the firmware to prevent it. I always wondered if someone deliberately coded that to augment their salary, as I'm sure there were others I didn't hear of.
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>>waited for a particular sequence of the lights flashing on the panel above the game after a particular sequence had landed on the reels then pressed start at the right time it would pay out the jackpot.
I always suspected that such stories were urban myth designed to get people to put in more money while waiting for the sequences. That particular one I think I remember as being one of the JPM machines?
I remember we had ridiculous theories about concerning just about everything in those days.
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>> I always wondered if someone deliberately coded that to augment their salary, as I'm
>> sure there were others I didn't hear of.
>>
If it was a microprocessor controlled one with physical reels as opposed to a video screen then having one such manufacturer as a client, I can confirm that staff were sacked for coding win notifications.
Last edited by: zippy on Mon 8 Mar 21 at 12:16
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Just last week one of our email addresses was hacked and there was an attempt to persuade a client to pay a large sum of money into a different bank account. Even used a mock up of our letterhead. Luckily they have a protocol of ringing the known number of the business to check such things (as we do) and it came out within an hour and no money was lost.
Emails have now had passwords changed and we are moving over to dual factor authorisation as well.
It's the same everywhere; the UK is no different. Our criminals are just like everyone else's criminals... The founding Prime Minister of Israel (David Ben-Gurion) said “When Israel has prostitutes and thieves, we'll be a state just like any other.”. It does, and so do we and every other country. No point bashing Britain on this point.
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>>Awful! That is truly evil.
It really is. And it often works.
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I just don't understand the comprehension levels of what would otherwise be intelligent people!
Saturday's Telegraph
www.telegraph.co.uk/money/fame-fortune/salvage-hunter-drew-pritchard-having-pension-stupidest-thing/
Quote
"Have you been ripped off?
Very recently we had an online fraud and lost £21,000 in minutes. Basically, somebody rang up said: “Your account is being attacked – stay on the phone and transfer this amount into this other account.” It was a scam. We got £7,000 back off HSBC"
End quote.
Last edited by: Duncan on Mon 8 Mar 21 at 12:45
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Surely you would immediately log on to your account and see it remained untouched?
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I don't intend to get caught either Duncan but I'm not as complacent as you. The full time job of these people is to be plausible. They might not catch you with the one you mention but anybody can potentially be conned.
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I would never give anybody any financial details such as PIN, or anything else for that matter, over the phone, in an email or by text. I would never make a transfer at someone else's request. I would never tell a password or give other confidential details. I would never allow access to my phone or computer.
I wouldn't invest in something over the phone or by email, I would not even make a phone call at someone else's request.
Whether I thought them credible and whole-heartedly believed them or not.
>> but anybody can potentially be conned.
Take your best shot.
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One at work recently:
Log on to your InBank account.
Log on to your lnBank account.
The first one is a capital I sounds like "aye". The second is an L sounds like "ell".
Very difficult to spot.
Last edited by: zippy on Mon 8 Mar 21 at 13:12
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I see how it is difficult to spot the difference, but I wouldn't do it anyway. The instruction is wrong, aside from anything else.
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Turn it round. When you get a legitimate bill, try and work out how that could be an attempted theft.
I just last week paid an invoice for several thousand that was emailed to be by my scaffolder. It appeared to come from his email address - which I think can be spoofed - but a sign with the name of the firm on it is attached to the scaffolding.
I still did further checks before paying it. Just paid another, £6000 from the plumbers. It was emailed to me by my PM. It referred to the quotation that said PM had forgotten to send me. I rang him to ask for it, but I wold have called him anyway as it was a new payee, and the plumber's signwritten vans are parked outside my building site.
I'm probably as careful as anybody can be.
When I sent the £86,000 for the timber frame, among other checks to paperwork etc. I rang their accounts department to check the bank details.
I've noticed that First Direct's internet banking now confirms that the payee's name I enter matches the account details, a check which has not been available for very long. This is long overdue. It told me that the scaffolder had missed out his middle initial.
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I've noticed that First Direct's internet banking now confirms that the payee's name I enter
>> matches the account details, a check which has not been available for very long. This
>> is long overdue. It told me that the scaffolder had missed out his middle initial.
>>
I've noticed nationwide have got the same thing, it's a good idea should have had years ago.
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>>I've noticed nationwide have got the same thing,
All banks should have implemented a similar system. It has been mandated.
>> it's a good idea should have had years ago
Well yes, but it cost a fortune to do and needed to be done across all of the different systems and in real time.
All easily said. Rather more difficult to implement.
It is still not perfect though. Mr fraudster, DEll would still appear to be correct at a quick glance.
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I'm sure it was expensive but in the costs you've quoted (£100bn) worth doing.
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>> I've noticed nationwide have got the same thing, it's a good idea should have had
>> years ago.
It's undoubtedly a good thing but not without unintended consequences:
www.theguardian.com/money/2020/sep/06/who-am-i-a-bank-security-check-that-leaves-you-guessing-your-own-name
I didn't remember that article from last year, it was linked from another Grauniad Money item I read this morning.
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Just don't change your name to NULL, it will really screw up the system.
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The fact that I only have one surname entirely screws up entire lumps of the Chilean databases, commercial and Government.
I have often considered the impact of changing my name to Mr. N. FM2R-NoAplica
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Our account got suspended when we were doing an extension a few years ago, it didn't like 2 payments to a new payee for several £000 at the same time. I only found out when the contract rang me up to find out where the money was, which was slightly concerning, but I was sure I had sent it to the right place.
The bank was similarly careful when I was trying to pay the mortgage off - it wouldn't let me arrange a one off transaction on line, and it took them doing checks and calling me back before it was allowed - and they read out the scammers check list more than once. I didn't point out that it had quite happily let me transfer the same money into a savings account a few weeks before, in 3 payments on successive days!!
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I think it was about 2005. A guy I was working with had £50,000 taken from his current account - some kind of counter cheque fraud though I no longer remember exactly what it was.
After much finagling and arguing he got the money back. He was, to be polite, a persistant man and when he pursued written assurance that the same thing could not happen again the bank finally said they were unable to guarantee that it would/could not.
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>> I think it was about 2005. A guy I was working with had £50,000 taken
>> from his current account - some kind of counter cheque fraud though I no longer
>> remember exactly what it was.
Around 2009 somebody accessed our joint accounts, ostensibly by telephone banking, and cleared out several grand.
We were just about to go on holiday to the Western Isles, leaving when the kids finished school on a Thursday. About 15:30 I logged into internet banking to make sure our current account had sufficient balance and to transfer savings if not. Found both accounts had been tampered with, payments to a Mr Boren.
Santander were pretty good about freezing our account and kicking off an investigation. Took rather longer for the agent to grasp that their nearest branch to our destination was Inverness. Not only was that around 80 miles away, the first 30 of those miles were in The Minch and needed the ferry.
Fortunately common sense prevailed and I was able to draw a significant amount in cash from the branch in Northampton shortly before it closed. Small hours before we got to our hotel in the Central Belt.
Once we got home a new account was set up and all DD's etc carried over and balances re-instated. I think there were a few hitches with continuous authority card payments but nothing serious.
Santander were a bit cagey about the outcome of their investigation but they were particularly interested in my interactions with Amazon.......
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>> Santander were a bit cagey about the outcome of their investigation but they were particularly
>> interested in my interactions with Amazon.......
>>
Call centres abroad are my bugbear.
Imagine calling up someone in Mumbai who earns £165 a month to query a bank account with £20k in it.
I think most people are fundamentally honest, but for the wrong type there must be a temptation to smuggle account data out to crooks who can really use it. The nmber of times I have had suspicious transactions or dodgy phone calls just after a telephone interaction with a customer services department speaks volumes to me.
Staff we use are not allowed to take any devices in to their call centres but if they have good memory then key details can be remembered or secretly entered on to a scrap of paper. It happens.
The number of companies that outsource over capacity calls here is frightening. Think you're taking to a major phone or utility company about your account. You may well be, but if they are busy it may well be an independent call centre company of which there are many.
In the past we have had cases of criminals attaching devices to our branch computers or coming in during an office refurb and attaching devices.
We have even had UK staff take out data and it has happened at other banks that I have worked at.
There are even dodgy system programmers, one of the best known is the UK bank with only 3 pin numbers for all of their banking customers - and three chances to guess the right one! I can't find the case online but it centred around an elderly couple who never used an ATM and missing money in the 80's. The bank refused to listen then it went to court and it was found to be the programmers who dun-it!
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>> Call centres abroad are my bugbear.
Santander 'Offshored' their basic customer service call centres around 15/20 years ago. Awful service, people with no real knowledge of life in the UK and, for the most part, just script jockeys with no authority to do anything. I had a right game trying to warn them in advance that I'd be spending £4k or similar on my annual rail season as it was inevitably the sort of transaction that would raise an alert. 'Valerie' hadn't the foggiest what I was on about.
The repatriated the service after a few years and the agents usually say where they are. Sheffield, Liverpool or Belfast are the usual places.
I am effectively a call centre worker myself though ours are distributed at local offices (or for last year people's own homes. We're allowed to keep devices, notebooks etc but I've heard of other operators, including some who are our rivals for contracts with government or utilities who have the model Zippy describes.
>>
>> The number of companies that outsource over capacity calls here is frightening. Think you're taking
>> to a major phone or utility company about your account. You may well be, but
>> if they are busy it may well be an independent call centre company of which
>> there are many.
DWP do this. Back up centres are operated by Capita and others. They can access basic information but lack the training etc to answer more complex questions.
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The stupidity of outsourced call centres is entirely beyond me and a fight I have been having for many years and only occasionally won.
Why outsource the only part of your company that deals with your customers?
Outsource HR, who cares? Ditto IT, purchasing, inventory management, logistics etc. etc. etc.
But if you only have contact with your customers via customer care, who in their right f. mind would outsource that bit?
The one part of your organisation that you should hold on to no matter what is the very part that deals with your customers.
Typical of Finance DEpartment run organisations who have no understanding of their own business.
F.Idiots, every one of them. They deserve all they get.
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>> The one part of your organisation that you should hold on to no matter what
>> is the very part that deals with your customers.
>>
>> Typical of Finance DEpartment run organisations who have no understanding of their own business.
>>
>> F.Idiots, every one of them. They deserve all they get.
>>
Yep.
In about 2005 to 2007 a previous employer (major UK bank) shifted every admin and customer contact job to Mumbai closing their specialist call centre and the largest non-govt employer in the town.
The only IT link that they could get to the new centre was a 9600 baud line. Everything had to be processed by fax. Customer service just did not exist. Great fun when a business customer had a query on the 200 page payroll bacs run that they had just sent and wanted to go through line by line.
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>> The stupidity of outsourced call centres
The company I worked for over 10 years ago outsourced to Crapita to save money. It didn't save money. The contract effectively incentivised them to create calls. Customers got poorer service and the cost increased.
The chap who did it was an accountant. Good guy but he got that one wrong.
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I recommend PlusNet. Call centres based in Yorkshire. O.K. you can't understand because they are from Yorkshire, but at least they are in the UK. .
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I guess some people are naturally trusting of others, human nature I guess.
As for scams i remember a version of the wallet inspector scam that was used on british tourists in spain. I think there was quite a few gangs that got rich off it, it worked pretty well for a few years.
Last edited by: sooty123 on Mon 8 Mar 21 at 13:42
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Any unsolicited contact by somebody claiming to be from a bank or other organisation which has a financial interest in you should be treated with caution if it comes via email, text or phone and never responded to in the way suggested by the caller or message. If you feel it may be genuine then contact the organisation on a number you know to be correct.
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A client purchased a shipload of structural steel for a tower block from China.
Passed all standards and documents to show it.
Of course the documents were all worthless with officials paid off.
The entire shipload was useless with even scrap merchants reluctant to take it.
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It shouldn't be allowed! - Duncan
