‘Silly decision’ leaves scammed couple out of pocket
A couple say they made a ’’silly decision’’ to trust a cold-caller who scammed them out of a significant amount of money.
On Friday morning Timaru pensioners Elizabeth and Stewart Clarkson were duped by a man pretending to be calling about their Spark account.
He told them he needed access to their computer in order to install software, necessary because their computer had been hacked.
Elizabeth said she’d initially been sceptical about the legitimacy of the call, having dismissed them in the past.
However, after handing over control of her laptop, she saw something that changed her mind.
‘‘A Spark logo came up and that made me think, ‘oh, OK, it is fine because there’s a Spark logo there’.’’
She said the man claimed her computer had been hacked multiple times, something Elizabeth said she had been completely unaware of. ‘‘To me, it sounded as if we really were having a problem. He said they would put on new software that would secure everything. To me it looked as if technicians were doing something with the screen.’’
Stewart said the man even pre- tended to ‘‘consult his technician’’ during the call.
The man originally said he would charge just a $15 fee. Eliza- beth told the scammer she would pay the bill through her Spark account. However, he told her as he was operating through a ‘‘different department’’ he would need another form of payment.
‘‘He asked for the bank card numbers, I said ‘no, we don’t actu- ally use our bank card; I only have a credit card and that’s for emergencies if we are travelling’.’’
Elizabeth said she then made the ‘‘stupid’’ mistake of giving the scammer her husband’s card details.
She knew something was up when the logo of Western Union, a money transfer service flashed up on the screen, with a dollar figure attached to it. When she confronted him about that, the man told her Spark had to pay for the software, however, she would be reimbursed.
However, at the request from the scammer to withdraw $2000 from her Kiwibank account and transfer it through Western Union to an address in China, Elizabeth hung up the phone. She immediately rang Spark, who confirmed the call wasn’t connected to them.
The couple then raised a dispute over the payment with Kiwibank, and cancelled the cards.
Stewart said they would ‘‘hopefully’’ get the money back.
The couple then contacted police.
Elizabeth said the next time she received such a call, the phone would be going straight back onto the receiver. ‘‘I certainly won’t be had again’’, she said.