Man targeted in £20,000 scam

A Peterborough man targeted by an elaborate fake police scam nearly lost £20,000.

The victim, who does not wish to be identified, said he was relieved not to have parted with the money after being targeted last Thursday afternoon.

He is the latest in a series of people to be scammed out of thousands of pounds by bogus cops.

He said: “It started with a phone call from the Visa fraud office to tell me they recognised unusual activity on my Visa card. They asked me if I had been in Birmingham that morning and made any purchases in John Lewis in Birmingham.”

The victim was told £29,000 had been take from his account, and he was given a fake local police number of 161 to call. When he called up he was passed onto a bogus Scotland Yard detective who told him to buy two high-end jewellery products amounting to £20,000, and that his bank would then send a courier to collect the products.

This was to make sure no more money could be taken from his account.

Despite querying the advice several times, and after receiving calls from people pretending to be from his bank, the victim then went into a jewellers where he was set to buy two Rolexes until the salesman intervened.

The victim said: “Fortunately for me he said ‘are you purchasing these for yourself or has somebody asked you to do it?’ I said I’m part of a police investigation. He said ‘I’m sorry, you’re not part of a police investigation’.”

A call to the real police then confirmed the scam. The victim said he would not have handed over the watches without receiving money into his account first to compensate him for the purchases, but he acknowledged: “The whole thing was very, very convincing.”

Police investigating the series of fraud incidents have now released an image of a car they believe to be involved.

The image of a car police believe to be involved in the fraud incidents