Fraudsters scam nurse out of €6k savings and leave her with just €8
Exhausted frontline health worker had just finished a 12-hour shift when she was cold-called by thieves
A CANCER unit nurse was scammed out of €6,000 in savings and left with just €8 by crooks who used apps to control her mobile phone.
Zuzanna Herdzina was targeted by a cold call from scammers who told her she was in debt of €180,000 due to her PPS number being used in money laundering overseas.
Ms Herdzina, 41, who lives in Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, said that she thought it made sense that her PPS number could be compromised, given the major cyber attack on Ireland’s public health system in May.
She told the Irish Daily Mail that she started ‘hysterically crying’ out of fear that she would be arrested and lose her job.
Ms Herdzina, who works in the Oncology Unit at the Mater Hospital in Dublin, said the men introduced themselves as officers of what they called the ‘financial crime authority’.
The first man – whom she described as the ‘bad cop’ – told her she was going to be arrested and needed to get a solicitor.
Ms Herdzina had been due to
‘When I think about it, it makes me sick’
visit her home country of Poland the following week to see her family – including a new tenmonth-old niece – for the first time since the pandemic began, but was told by the men that she could not leave the country.
The second man was the ‘good cop’, who told Ms Herdzina not to worry and that she was not in trouble, but that it was a case of stolen identity.
‘He told me: “Oh ma’am, you seem very distressed. Have a sip of water.” When I think about it now, it actually makes me sick. I can still hear his voice,’ she said.
He told her that they would protect her and her money from the ‘real criminals’.
They asked her to download an app called AnyDesk, which is designed to allow IT professionals remote access to desktops.
She said: ‘I got an incoming call from that app and when I answered, he got control of my mobile. He could see exactly what I was doing on my phone.’
The man told Ms Herdzina how to transfer her money from her Bank of Ireland banking app into Revolut and then into another app she was asked to download, called SafeWallet. They told her she would be given a new PPS number and would then need to set up a new Bank of Ireland account to which the money would be transferred.
‘They didn’t have the decency to leave me a couple of €100 to live. They cleared me completely. I had €8 left in my Bank of Ireland account,’ she said.
Ms Herdzina was targeted after a 12-hour night shift, with the call waking her up in the afternoon after she had only had around three hours of sleep.
She said: ‘I was absolutely exhausted. It’s really embarrassing for me when I talk about it now, it’s so obvious it was a scam.
‘But it was all so professional. I thought they were saving my life so I didn’t mind them controlling my phone.’
When Ms Herdzina realised she had been scammed, Bank of Ireland told her that as she had authorised the transfer to Revolut, there was nothing it could do. Revolut’s online chat also gave a similar response about her having authorised everything herself.
However, she also reported the incident to the gardaí, who contacted Revolut and told it about the evidence she had given, and the unlucky nurse was then refunded the money.
During this time, Ms Herdzina’s friend set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for her.
Within two weeks, €6,000 had been raised. ‘My friend set it up because I was broken at that stage. I said if I get €200 out of that GoFundMe page, it is going to be good, because it’s better than nothing, because I had nothing,’ she said.
‘It was an absolutely amazing response from the people of Ireland. I did not expect it.’
Since receiving news of the refund from Revolut, she has refunded all donors.
Fraudsters scammed Irish people out of almost €16million in 2020, a 51% increase on the previous year, a report by FraudSMART recently revealed.
Victims lost an average of €5,300 in scams, as the total number jumped by almost 80% last year, compared with 2019.
A Revolut spokesperson said that the trend of scammers ‘tricking victims into downloading malicious apps is becoming more commonplace’.
They added: ‘Revolut is working closely with the Irish authorities as well as Irish retail banks to combat this kind of scam.’
Bank of Ireland said: ‘Fraudsters have been very active throughout the pandemic and just [recently] we issued a warning for customers who are being targeted in this way to be more fraud-aware.
‘If you get a call from someone asking you to download software or an app to your phone then please hang up – this is a scam.
‘We are continuing to encourage customers to adopt the “Zero Trust” principle – never trust, always verify when it comes to online activity and protecting personal and financial information.’
‘It was an amazing response’