Keeping safe by fearing the worst

EVERY day countless people fall victim to scams.

The best way to avoid this is to be cautious about everything and assume that all communications are potentially a fraud until proven otherwise.

Thankfully, this is precisely what these readers did.

MONEY LAUNDERING

Steve, from York, was phoned on December 8 by a man who announced himself as being from a property development company.

He explained to Steve that his firm had accidentally paid £250,000 into his bank account while completing a property transaction.

He apologised to Steve and told him that he could keep £10,000 of the money as compensation for the inconvenience and he then provided details of a bank account to send the remaining £240,000 to.

Steve immediately thought it was a hoax and asked the caller where he got his number from.

In response the caller told him that the bank had provided it.

After the call Steve immediately logged on to his internet banking and was shocked to see that £250,000 had been received into his account.

He immediately contacted his bank to raise his concerns, he says because all he could think of was me regularly writing about scams and saying “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is”.

It transpired that instead of being the easiest £10,000 he had ever earned, had Steve transferred the money back he would have been part of a money laundering scheme, for which he could have gone to prison.

The money had therefore been sent to his account as part of a “cleaning exercise”. The sender had asked for the money to be sent to a different account and this is a classic trait of money laundering.

FAKE COURIER

Gill, from North London, received a text saying: “We tried to deliver your parcel today whilst you were not home. As the parcel is high value we were unable to leave it outside of your property.

“To arrange a new delivery date please click here.”

Gill, a regular reader, clicked on the link but then remembered the warning I always give: “Never click on a link in a message.”

After clicking the link she was asked for pieces of personal information and directed to pay £10 for the new delivery date. She immediately knew it was a scam.