How cruel delivery text scam cost me all of my life savings
ACTRESS Emmeline Hartley described her horror at being ‘scammed out of every penny I had’ after falling for a fake Royal Mail text.
The 28-year-old from Birmingham, was duped by the message which claimed she owed a £2.99 ‘postage fee’ for a package to be delivered.
She clicked on the link in the text which led to a website that mimicked the real Royal Mail page, and submitted her bank details.
The next day, a man pretending to be from her bank phoned and said they had identified suspicious activity on her account — and convinced her to transfer all her cash to another account to ‘protect’ it.
Emmeline (pictured) says: ‘I grew up with the internet and consider myself to be pretty tech-savvy.
‘But the reality is that anyone can get caught out if the scammers get them at a vulnerable moment.
‘In my case, the text came through when I was rushing to meet a friend with my phone on two per cent, so I wasn’t thinking clearly.
‘The text said that I had to pay an additional postage fee because someone had sent me a parcel, which seemed plausible as my birthday was coming up.
‘When I clicked the link, the site was identical to the Royal Mail one — they’d even set up redirects so the URLs looked right on the pages I checked.’
The following day, the fake bank representative called to make false claims about suspicious payments.
Emmeline says: ‘I said that the transactions weren’t authorised by me, and they asked if I could think of a time when someone could have got my details. I then recalled the text.
‘From then on I was at their mercy — when someone tells you your money is at risk, all you care about is keeping it safe.
‘I wasn’t thinking clearly and he convinced me to transfer all the money to a different account.
‘We went through all the security steps — even the number he called from matched the one on my bank website.’
Emmeline transferred £1,000 — her entire savings — but realised it was a scam when they also tried to get her to move her overdraft.
She says: ‘They’re master manipulators and know exactly how to prey on your panic, so teaching people how to do it is horrible.
‘The people who sell these scam lessons are lower than low.
‘I really think more needs to be done by social media platforms because at the moment it seems to be far too easy to sell these scams online.’