New take on old scam

mikewill34

BEWARE new take on an old scam. A relative received fake support call from someone saying they were from TalkTalk they went through the usual crap of frightening the end user by showing them the windows event viewer.

The scammer wanted to pay the end user some compensation and got hold of their bank details, they then paid £5200 by transfer.
The scammer then said they had "accidentally" paid too much and would get the sack if the boss found out (sob sob) and could the end user take the money out in cash and pay the scammer back to an account in the far east, by money gram obtained from the post office.

The end user fortunately did not do this and called me instead.
I have advised them to go to the police as this is a dirty scam and if the end user paid them the over payment back the whole of the £5200 would be recalled and they would be £5000 out of pocket.

InsideInsurance

Sounds like just an old scam to me

mikewill34

Update:
My relative went to the bank and they tracked the money down to coming from his savings account.

This happened because the scammers duped him into opening his online banking while they had remote control of his PC. Thus they were able to quickly transfer the £5200 which they pretended was the incorrect payment, then try to con him into sending £5000 of his own money to them by a means which it is very difficult to retract.

He has been to the police and they said he needed to get in touch with action fraud. Especially as has has a print out of the bank the scammers wanted him to send the money to.

I do hope action fraud send some money and follow it to the criminals, then get whatever country then operate from to throw them in jail and lose the keys.

arcon5

Why didn't they just transfer the money to themselves if they got hold of his banking stuff

TadleyBaggie

Probably because setting up a new payee may require verification, with Barclays for example you need to go through a process with the pin sentry device, the debit card and the PIN. It would be too obvious it was a scam at that point.

wacko911

Thanks, this a new one. Quite smart really of the scammers. Wonder how they moved the money from savings account while logged on wiithout the user noticing? Maybe blanked the screen for a minute or something?

Would prolly work on 1 out of 10 victims. I'm guessing the amounts are not as large normally. A lot of people wouldnt have 5k in saving. Then again, many more would have a lot more.

maninthestreet

Am I reading the above correctly? The scammers actually transferred £5200 into the bank account of the OP's relative ???

TrickyDicky101

maninthestreet wrote: »

Am I reading the above correctly? The scammers actually transferred £5200 into the bank account of the OP's relative ???

Yes but from the relative's savings account (so it didn't cost the scammers anything).

bingo_bango

maninthestreet wrote: »

Am I reading the above correctly? The scammers actually transferred £5200 into the bank account of the OP's relative ???

That's how these scams work. They transfer money to you (usually from a cloned or stolen credit card) or send you a cheque for far more than the item in question (online anti-virus service, that chair you're selling on Gumtree, your mobile on eBay.....). They sometimes claim that this is payment from a client they work for and as an act of good faith they will get their client to send you the £5K cheque for your £200 item. They may even offer an extra amount for the inconvenience.

You are then asked to send the balance to a Western Union account or another bank account once the cheque has cleared in a few days (seen UK banks used for this). The cheque arrives, clears as normal, and you then send the balance.

A week or 6 later, when the fraud is reported (it is always fraud) your bank has to return the stolen funds to the issuing bank. This means that you are now stuck for the whole of that stolen amount (including the original sale cost of whatever you sold them), because you have withdrawn the money and sent it elsewhere.

The twist in this instance is where they were able to use the OPs relatives own funds to transfer from his savings account to his current account. Less risk for the scammer, as they no longer need to steal cheques or clone card details.

The 'I'll send you more than you need' normally throws people, as they think that anyone taking such a big risk must be legit.

mikewill34

Golden Rule - DO NOT OPEN your on-line banking if someone else is remote controlling your PC

They conned my relative into allowing them remote control via team viewer.

Another person I have talked to said they claimed someone else was using their broadband and would need to connect to "sort it out" they slammed the phone down.

Golden Rule - DO NOT OPEN your on-line banking if someone else is remote controlling your PC

SailorSam

They were talking on Bbc Breakfast about the number of elderly who fall victim to phone scams. By elderly they said over 55. I thought that was young. Police are having a campaign to remind people to never give out any private details, always insist on calling these people back on a landline.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-33405601