Pensioner has lucky escape in phone scam

Hoax caller tried to trick woman out of £1,000 using her online banking account

A Broughty Ferry pensioner has told of how she almost lost £1,000 after falling prey to an elaborate and “unusual” phone scam.

Sandra Ludlam took a call from a man claiming to be from Talk Talk, who offered her £320 in compensation for a “virus” that she supposedly had on her computer.

When the money arrived, the 66-yearold noticed she had been overpaid by £1,000 and informed the caller, who said it was a mistake and asked her to return the cash via MoneyGram.

But when she checked her bank account, Sandra saw that the “compensation” was actually money transferred from her ISA to her current account by the scammer, who had hacked into her online banking system.

Sandra said: “I would have essentially been voluntarily giving the scammer £1,000 of my own money.

“I’ve always been vigilant about scams, thinking I’d never fall for one.

“But this one was very unusual, because the caller never once asked me to hand over credit card details or anything like that.

“He sounded so professional, saying he was from Talk Talk and that there was a problem with my router due to a virus.

“That rang a bell, because I’d been having patchy internet. He then performed all sorts of things remotely on my computer to “fix” the problem and said he’d send me a new router.

“He even gave me an ID number, a date, time and a name for the delivery driver.

“In the end he apologised for the problem and said the company would compensate me £320.

“He put it in my account and when I checked it, it said he’d given me £1,320.

“I told him he’d overpaid me and he asked me to return the £1,000 via MoneyGram.”

At this point Sandra had been on the phone for around two hours and said she would make the transfer in the morning.

But something didn’t seem right and she checked her bank account again.

She added: “I spotted that money had been taken out of my own savings account and transferred to my current account, making it look like it was from the caller.

“He must have done it when I was checking my online banking account while he was tinkering in my computer.

“The odd thing is that he didn’t take any money out, and was instead relying on me to give him the money – my bank later said that would have made it almost impossible to trace him.

“They blocked all my accounts and I changed my passwords, so I didn’t lose any cash.

“All of this has left me feeling very vulnerable and a bit of a fool – I want to warn others to be careful.”

The number on the caller ID appeared to be from Manchester and the man had what sounded like an Indian accent.

Picture: Kris Miller. Sandra Ludlam said she had always been vigilant about scams, thinking she would never fall for one.