Daughter recalls impact of loss on family

THE family of a man who lost £130,000 after clicking on an online advertisement has described the devastating impact it had on him.

Indukumar Patel, 87, from Barnet, north London, who lost his life’s savings to scammers.

Patel lost £130,000 after clicking on an online ad that led him to what looked like a famous bank. He carried out checks on the bank, but the criminal gang behind the fraud had created an elaborate facade. And the fact it was advertised on a popular internet site reassured him it was legitimate.

“I think it destroyed him. He is such a proud man,” his daughter Poorvi Smith told Channel 4 News last week. “He was full of life, full of vitality, and pretty much from that day [he] just didn’t want to socialise anymore, just withdrew from everything, didn’t eat, lost his appetite, just sat in his room all day, didn’t even want to see us. He didn’t even want to see his family, which is heart breaking.”

According to Smith, she lost her dad six months before he actually died because his “personality and soul just completely changed”.

She told Channel 4: “At the hospital, the doctors did say to us, has he had a big trauma? Has he had a shock because he’s acting like a person in shock? He just said, ‘I don’t want to live anymore. I’ve messed up. I’ve let you all down. I don’t want to live’.

“That was just devastating because he shouldn’t have been the one that was feeling guilty.”

According to The Times, Patel was refunded £20,000 of his losses by his bank which admitted failings in its scam warnings.