Seeing this scam while checking through current news items I thought it worth letting OFC members know about it. There appears to be nothing these evil scammers will not stoop to so as to fund their appalling behaviour:
"A grandfather has told of how he lost money saved for Christmas presents after his family were duped by fraudsters on WhatsApp."
"The 75-year-old, who wished to remain anonymous, said they had been tricked by criminals posing as his grand-daughter on the messaging service.
He transferred £1,550 to the con-artists, for an emergency medical bill that was a fake.
WhatsApp and trading standards officers are warning others of the scam."
Time and time again people are warned to be aware of these scams but still the crooks prosper. Every social media outlet should be made to put warnings of potential scams regularly on their sites consisting of a few relatively simple steps to take if there is the slightest doubt as to wether the message is genuine or not. In this family’s case a simple phone call may have sufficed.
The problem is, and probably always will be, is that there are people who are very vulnerable, so easy prey for these appalling people. I have no idea of how many of these scammers are caught, or if they are then what sentences are received, even so there must be thousands and thousands of them, all only need to be lucky a few times with their scams and they will get a good living from their appalling crimes.
The chap who was scammed did try to make contact by phone, but unfortunately without success:
"Attempts to contact her directly failed, as the calls went straight to an answerphone.
Only after the money was paid did they get through to her, and realised they had been tricked."
Possibly you are but I get a lot of this with family. If they are doing something or out somewhere mobiles are turned off so go to voicemail. A lot of places like doctors and dentists insist on mobiles being turned off. I disagree with this as it’s possible just to switch most mobiles to ‘Silent’, then with the ‘Vibration’ option used a call can be noticed and taken if it’s urgent. Switching mobiles off is just how it seems to be these days. If like me the landline is also either non-existent or on an answerphone that’s never answered, a person can be uncontactable for hours or even days. Annoying to say the very least!
