Cyber criminals posing as bank and telecom officials steal £45k from NI women

A PSNI officer has urged the public to be vigilant after reports emerged of two women being scammed out of nearly £50,000.

Scammers claiming to be from BT convinced a woman that her account was being hacked from Amsterdam.

The con, which was reported on Monday, saw the woman download programmes which gave hackers remote access to her bank account — and they stole £5,000.

This came after another woman was emailed about a tax rebate by a scammer posing as a HMRC worker on October 9.

She had been expecting a rebate for around the sameamountasthe email suggested, so she gave the scammer her details.

But she reread the email the next day and realised it was a con, due to the number of spelling mistakes.

After contacting her bank, they flagged her account for suspicious activity.

Over a month later — on November 12 — she was called by a man claiming to be from her bank, who had noticed fraudulent activity.

He offered to close the account and open a new one if she transferred across the daily limit of £9,000.

Alarmingly, the message was sent from the same phonenumberasthe victim’s bank, so she transferred £40,000 into the new accounts over a number of days. The money has not been recovered.

Chief Superintendent Simon Walls said: “Unfortunately, these are just two examples of online scams where two people have ple that something is not right. “We are reassured that people are able to spot these scams and they are picking up the phone to report them to us,” he added.

Around 21 people are targeted by fraudsters through social media every minute, according to a survey by Get Safe Online.

And Action Fraud, the UK’s reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime, found 2,685 fake TV licensing emails were sent in October and September.

Report incidents to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 or call 101 for police.

Visit www.actionfraud.police.uk or www.nidirect.gov.uk/scamwiseni for more information.