Man conned out of $30,000 in plausible ruse

An man, conned out of almost $30,000, is warning of a phone scam so sophisticated it broke through even his most ‘‘skeptical defences’’.

The scam happened a week after John Calkin, a retired North Shore teacher, had fibre optic internet installed in December.

He had been expecting a followup call and when it came, it sounded just like the people who had installed it.

Calkin said he had shut down many scam attempts in the past, but there was something different about this one: ‘‘They knew so much information about me.’’

He knew the 76-year-old’s name, his address, and the fact that he had upgraded his Spark connection. ‘‘It was enough to take the edge off my vigilance.’’

The scammer said ‘‘concerning irregularities’’ meant his internet connection was highly insecure. He asked Calkin for permission to take remote control of his computer screen. But that raised red flags.

‘‘I said ‘how do I know this isn’t a scam?’ He said, ‘Here is my office number and here is my technician’s registration number.

‘‘At that stage I should have hung up and rung it, but I didn’t, and gave him benefit of the doubt, thinking the fact that he offered it was a pretty positive sign that it was genuine.’’

The scammer said, because his connection was insecure, hackers could have details to all his financial and personal information. He instructed Calkin to log into internet banking and email accounts to ‘‘secure them’’.

Each time Calkin complied, the scammer siphoned off three sums of money - $9850, $9970 and $9988.

Calkin had to go to an appointment - and came back later.

The scammer called him back and advised him that while he was away hackers were trying to take money out of his account and it was frozen.

The bank wouldn’t unfreeze it over the phone - he had to visit the bank in person. ‘‘It was about that

‘‘They knew so much information about me.’’

time the bank started calling me, the bank’s fraud investigation person said said I’m very sorry to have to tell you but you’ve had about $30,000 stolen from your bank account.’’

Spark’s communications advisor Lydia Tebbutt said the most important thing to remember was Spark would never call customers out of the blue to ask for personal details like credit card or internet banking details or to request access to their personal computer or laptop.

123RF A man claiming to be ‘‘Eric’’ a technician from Spark scammed a North Shore man of $30,000.