Belfast pensioner swindled out of £10k by scammers

AN elderly Belfast woman has been conned out of £10,000 by scammers who contacted her about her Amazon Prime account.

Police from Lisburn Road Station visited the woman’s home on Thursday evening in relation to the fraud.

The woman had received several calls to her landline about the Amazon Prime account.

During these she was asked certain details about her payment methods.

Police said the scammers then passed her through to what she was told was the National Crime Agency to speak to an agent.

She was placed on hold for several minutes and the scammers proceeded to swindle her out of £10,000 through a bank transfer.

The fraud took nearly an hour of convincing by the scammers, which included tricking her into downloading an app that accessed her smartphone without her knowledge.

‘No bank will ask you to download an app which gives them remote access to your phone or computer’

Using this app, the scammers were able to view everything on her phone.

The woman would have been defrauded out of another £10,000 if her bank did not get in contact regarding the suspicious activity in her account.

“Even so, the scammers continued to try and contact the female again by phone several times, as they wanted more,” the PSNI said.

“The National Crime Agency (NCA) will never contact you asking for your bank information.

“No bank, financial institution or government body will ever ask you to download an app which gives them remote access to your phone or computer. These apps are widely available and have genuine uses, but are abused by scammers. The PSNI said that the fraud “being a week before Christmas makes this especially stomach-churning”.

“Please be vigilant. If you get one of these calls and have the slightest suspicion that something fishy is going on, then hang up and ring the police,” it added.

“These scammers do this day in and day out and can be very convincing. A genuine financial institution will never contact you out of the blue to get you to transfer large amounts of money into a random account.

“Lisburn Road local policing team are now working with the vulnerable female and her bank to try and recover the money.”