The Mail on Sunday

Complaints over cold call crooks DOUBLE as the scammers cash in on lockdown

- By Laura Shannon

TELEPHONE pests are stepping up their efforts to harass, pressurise and steal money from t he elderly with a deluge of ‘nuisance’ calls. Official figures show that complaints about such attempted cons more than doubled in the months following the first national lockdown in March. The calls embrace everything from bothersome sales pitches, fictitious motor accidents, through to outright fraud – and can be either from a real person (‘live’) or automated (‘ spam’). In all instances, they were not requested by the recipient. According to a major study to be released this week by spamblocki­ng app Truecaller, these calls have resulted in the UK becoming t he s eventh most ‘spammed’ country in the world.

This year, i t says there has been a 159 per cent increase in spam calls – irrelevant, inappropri­ate contact.

Yet underlying these figures is a worrying trend. The proportion of nuisance calls that are scams is rising and vulnerable people are twice as likely to be targeted.

On Friday, Paul Holland, a prevention services manager for Trading Standards, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘For some people, nuisance calls are merely frustratin­g and an irritation. But for others they can result in lifechangi­ng financial loss.

‘In just one week recently, I witnessed two people lose £90,000 and £70,000 to scams. One was a woman who was devastated after being scammed as she was left with no money to pay for her late husband’s gravestone. She didn’t leave her house for weeks afterwards. Her confidence and faith in humanity was obliterate­d.’

Predators are shamelessl­y pursuing dementia sufferers. For example, an 81- year- old woman from South Ayrshire in Scotland, who has dementia, was hounded by an average 100 nuisance calls a month. On average, UK households receive 18 such calls a month.

Another woman living independen­tly with dementia in East Renfrewshi­re, and who was resistant to outside help, lost more than £20,000 to telephone-based scams.

Her niece, who is her main carer – a job she does while looking after her own children – says: ‘My aunt has been a victim of several scams and has willingly given her credit card details t o cold- call ers and sales people.

‘ It has resulted in the unnecessar­y purchase of multiple i nsurance policies to cover household appliances and inappropri­ate health products. Often she has no recollecti­on of it and feels she has been taken advantage of.’

NUISANCE calls are increasing­ly focused on insurance for domestic appliances and loft insulation – with fraudsters looking to capitalise on the Government’ s new Green Homes Grant scheme, which encourages people to make their homes more energy efficient.

Also, despite a ban on cold- calls relating to pensions which came into force in January last year, companies are still flouting the rules.

Swansea-based firm CPS Advisory was recently fined £130,000 by the Informatio­n Commission­er’s Office ( ICO), t he UK’s data protection watchdog, for making more than 100,000 unauthoris­ed calls to people about their pensions.

The spread of coronaviru­s in the spring saw an uptick in scam calls relating to hand sanitiser and face masks. But the bulk of complaints about nuisance calls still relate to claims for car accidents that never happened – and companies

offering either broadband or te le co ms services. Although there was a lull in complaints between March and June, they jumped by more than 100 per cent between July and October.

The latest ICO figures show there were more than 13,000 complaints about nuisance calls and text messages in October alone. That’s the highest number of complaints to the watchdog in one month since March last year. But these numbers don’t tell the full story, since people most affected don’t usually make official complaints.

Analysis of data from communicat­ions regulator Ofcom shows that the percentage of nuisance calls that are illegal scams, rather than just telemarket­ing, has doubled in the past two years. In 2017, one fifth of nuisance calls were scams. Last year, this figure had doubled to 40 per cent. A further 28 per cent of calls were thought to involve mis-selling, even if not an outright fraud.

Specialist call-blocking company trueCall (not related to Truecaller) works with police forces, local authoritie­s and Trading Standards to fight the phone rogues. Its director Steve Smith says older and more vulnerable people are nearly twice as likely to be targeted as the rest of the company’s customer base.

This is based on analysis of data supplied by 10,000 people from their call-blocking machines. Smith adds: ‘Nuisance calls is an umbrella term – and includes the malice of scam calls. And i t ’s a double whammy for vulnerable groups because the people most at risk are those called more often.’

Across both telephone and mailbased scams, the average sum lost by victims is £2,952 according to Trading Standards.

Jerry Houseago, consumer expert at charity Citizens Advice, says: ‘In the last 12 months, our online advice on stopping nuisance calls has been viewed 193,000 times.

‘With more scams being reported throughout the pandemic, it’s vital to know how to protect yourself and your family.’ He recommends registerin­g with the free Telephone Preference Service. Telemarket­ers are banned from calling a number registered to this.

Visit tpsonline.org.uk, call 0345 070 0707 or register mobile numbers by texting ‘TPS’ and your email address to 85095. It can take up to 28 days to become effective.

Houseago adds: ‘The service won’t block all unwanted calls – like those from abroad or companies you’ve previously given your number to. But it should lessen them.’

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