East Lothian fraudsters conned 57-year-old man out of thousands by pretending to be bank employee and police fraud department

A 57-year-old man was defrauded out of almost £58,000, after becoming the victim of a telephone bank scam in East Lothian.

The man was called by someone claiming to be from his bank, who said that there had been fraudulent activity on his account.

He was asked if he would be willing to help the bank and Police Scotland in an internal investigation.

The fraudsters used the name of a legitimate bank employee, and used phone numbers that appeared to be from Police Scotland, in order to convince the man to transfer the money.

Police have urged the public to be vigilant, and have given out advice on how to avoid becoming the victim of a similar scam.

Detective Constable Garry Mauran said: “This was a very sophisticated scam. The man genuinely thought he was assisting the bank and the police frauds department and made genuine efforts to check this was legitimate before taking action.

“I would like to remind the public, if fraud has been committed on your account, banks will never contact you direct and ask you to transfer money to another account. If they do hang up immediately.

Police have issued a warning to the public about telephone scams, after a 57-year-man was defrauded in East Lothian.

“You shouldn’t feel pressured into taking action and transferring money, a genuine caller will understand if you want to make the relevant checks. If anyone is in any way suspicious I would ask then to get in touch with their bank.”

If you are worried about fraudulent activity, or feel you may have been scammed, you can contact the police on 101.

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by Coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription.