Scammers are banking on your desire to help loved ones

Scammers use devious tactics to try and catch us out

Last week I wrote about some of the various scams that are on the go and some ways to avoid being taken in. As it turns out I was sitting enjoying a pint with my “Monday Club” friends when one of them asked me if I could do him a favour.

He told me that his daughter had just sent him a text asking him to send a sum of money to a bank account on her behalf.

She also informed him that she had a new telephone number, so he had deleted the old one and updated the details.

She also told him that it was imperative that the money arrived in the said account by 6pm. He had received her text at 5.30pm so had to get his skates on, but he could not send the money to the account she had stipulated because he did not possess the necessary information to allow him to do so.

He then suggested sending the money to my account which I could then forward to the relevant party to which I agreed.

On attempting to do so I was obstructed by my bank, the Bank of Scotland, who requested that I call them which I duly did, whereupon they informed me that this was a scam and my account had not been debited.

On reflection there were a couple of telltale signs that we should have recognised.

His daughter had changed her telephone number, and the text was received after banking hours saying that the money should be transferred almost immediately.

So, he was unable to contact his daughter because the number he had for her was no longer in use and he was given very little time to carry out any checks because he only had a few minutes before transferring the amount requested.

This is yet another example of how devious the scammers are, banking (excuse the pun) on his desire to help his daughter out of a tricky situation and giving him very little time to do so.

Suffice to say I duly returned the money to his account!