OPENING UP THE ROYAL MAIL CON

Huge kudos to the fraud victim who posted her story on Twitter as a warning to others.

Student Emmeline Hartley received a fake Royal Mail text saying she needed to pay £2.99 for a delivery.

Because she was expecting a couple of packages, she clicked on the message and paid the supposed fee.

This was sowing the seed for a much bigger scam.

Crooks then called her claiming to be from her bank and saying that someone was trying to fraudulently use her credit card.

Because she now knew that the text was a scam, this made sense, and she followed instructions to move her savings to a

“safe” account, but in fact one controlled by the fraud gang.

The expert caller knew some of her personal banking information and was spoofing the genuine Barclays fraud department phone number, so it seemed legitimate.

“I’m usually very good at not falling for scams, but this one caught me off-guard at a pretty vulnerable time,” she wrote.

One grateful Twitter user replied: “Very nearly fell for the same trick. The number they call you from shows on your phone as being your bank, they are persistent, aggressive and know the system inside out.”

Last year £479million was lost to scams in which victims were tricked into making bank transfers to fraudsters, according to banking industry group UK Finance. Around 800,000 people fell victim to financial crime.

A report last week by Parliament’s Work and Pensions Committee on protecting pensions savers was scathing about the role of Google in promoting investment scams.

“It is immoral that tech firms such as Google are accepting payment to advertise scams, and then further payment from regulators to warn about the scam,” it reads. “It should not require legislative solutions to deter global firms from benefitting from the proceeds of crime, but unfortunately legislation is clearly needed.”

The report also highlighted the disillusion of victims with Action Fraud.

This week the Crown Prosecution Service said it would provide more resources for specialist economic crime prosecutors.

More resources are certainly needed – fraud accounts for a third of reported crime but only 1% of police are dedicated to dealing with it.