LECTURER FLEECED OF £20K AFTER BREAST OP

MOTheR- of- three Virginia Calder lost £20,000 while recovering from breast surgery to fraudsters claiming to be from the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The 56-year-old lecturer got a call on February 3 while she was still groggy from the anaesthetic and ‘resting with chicken soup’ at a friend’s house.

The scammers asked her ‘not unusual’ questions about her date of birth and address.

dr Calder was told there had been suspicious activity on her account and it had been frozen after a large payment had been made. When she checked online the academic discovered the account was indeed marked ‘frozen’ and that £18,500 had been added from her mother’s account over which she had power of attorney.

She was told the cash, to pay for her mother’s care home costs as she has dementia, needed to be moved to a new account to be safe. She was given instructions on how to send the total amount in the account – almost £20,000 – using her card reader.

But dr Calder received a genuine call from RBS later telling her the bank had ‘noticed some unusual transactions’. By the time the bank traced the halifax account that had contained her money it had been emptied.

She said: ‘The whole experience set me back weeks on the road to recovery.

‘I was recently widowed, vulnerable and had just lost my mother’s money – it capped off the worst year of my life.

‘But RBS told me it was my fault because I had authorised the transfer – all they would refund was £40.’ dr Calder, from Glasgow, has since taken out a loan to pay her bills and reported her case to the Financial Ombudsman.