Professor’s 6-hour phone ordeal

MARGARET Cox OBE, a professor of information technology at King’s College London, was conned out of a substantial sum in January by the telephone scammers.

In a horrendous coincidence, at the time she was in dispute with HMRC over tax payments, which is why she believed the threat of arrest was genuine.

After being repeatedly intimidated during a six-hour call she made four payments from her Natwest account. Towards the end of the call, she realised she had been tricked and immediately reported it to the Natwest fraud team. The following day she also told Action Fraud, the national reporting centre for cyber fraud, and the Financial Conduct Authority.

But after being disappointed by their ‘lacklustre’ reaction the IT expert turned investigator. She transferred £1 postdated into each of the accounts she had paid into. All were approved by Natwest before she recalled them. Prof Cox said: ‘I was told the amount I lost was nothing compared with some customers. It is astonishing that banks allow this to continue.’