New online scam gives false vaccine promise

THE Covid crisis has seen the rise of a new and callous scam. Emails are sent, telling people they qualify for a vaccination. They direct those who respond to a fake NHS website which asks for bank and personal details.

Katherine Hart of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute says: “The vaccine brings great hope, but some only wish to create even further misery by defrauding others. The NHS will never ask you for banking details, passwords or PIN numbers.”

Scams have been around for centuries. In 1821 Gregor MacGregor got fellow Scots to invest in a Central American country called Poyais. It didn’t exist.

In the 1920s Count Victor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower twice to scrap dealers.

West African internet banking frauds are legendary and fakers promising romance have plied their cruel trade for years.

In recent decades it has been amazing how many European blonde girls in bikinis living in Nigeria want sugar daddies in Western Europe: the pictures have been stolen and anyone who falls for their approaches has their bank details stolen, too.

Thieves and conmen are seldom bothered by their conscience. Grave robbers did not steal corpses to aid medical science but for cash.

Sentiment was absent when thieves used the death notices in local newspapers to pick houses to burgle while grieving relatives were at the funeral.

And we still get pretend officials knocking on the doors of pensioners to rob them without compassion.

Covid has produced great examples of humanity from neighbours, friends, communities and strangers, and most of all from essential workers and the NHS.

Sadly, it is inevitable it also brings out the despicable greed in scammers, too.

Remember what Public Health England says: “The Covid-19 vaccination is only available through the NHS to eligible groups and it is a free vaccination.”

The NHS will never ask you for banking details, passwords or PIN

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