Warning to watch out for fake bank app scam
COLLECTOR CONNED OUT OF £750 HEARS OF OTHER VICTIMS ONLINE
A WATCH collector scammed by men using a fake banking app has discovered other victims have fallen prey to the same trick.
Steve Bower, who lives in Hugglescote, was selling a couple of watches from his collection and two men visited his house to buy one of them for £750.
After Steve’s wife, Rachel, entered her bank details into their phone banking app the money appeared to send but didn’t appear in her account.
She called her bank and was told the cash could take up to two hours to show up in her account so she let the men - who said they were in a rush - leave with the Tag Heuer watch.
After he posted on Facebook about the scam, Steve received comments from people all over the UK who have had the exact same experience while selling valuable items including phones, watches and laptops.
Steve, 37, said: “I collect watches and I was selling a couple to pay for a new one I was buying, so I put them up for sale on Facebook.
“A lad said he was interested in it and I was out when he came around to our house with another man.
“Rachel showed them the watch and one of them did a bank transfer from his phone’s Halifax app. She put in her bank details and it all looked pretty legit.
“It said the money was sent to her account.”
After the men left and the money never showed up in his wife’s account, Steve told the police what had happened but was told it was fraud, rather than theft.
He said: “The insurance is void because they were invited into the house and everything and the police don’t consider it to be theft.
“But there’s a lot of it about - I wrote about it online and got people from all over who have had the same thing happen to them.”
He said the men spoke with Irish accents and one of them had several tattoos. They were driving a silver blue Ford Focus.
A spokesman for Leicestershire Police confirmed the incident, on Tuesday, September 7, had been reported to the force, who had referred it to Action Fraud to look into.
Action Fraud said it was unable to say how many similar incidents had been reported as they were all categorised as bank fraud.
A spokesman for Finance UK, which represents British banks, urged anyone selling items not to hand them over until the money was received in their account.