Victim of Mobile Phone Delivery Scam

T4Z77

Hi there,
We have unfortunately become the victim of the mobile phone delivery scam. Yesterday a mobile phone got delivered to our house (even though we had not ordered one) and was accepted by my mum (aged 70+). About 2 hours later, a big burly guy claiming to be a courier managed to grab my mum's attention when she was coming back from the local shops, saying that the package had been delivered in error. My mum asked a few questions but, being innocent of dodgy dealers, ended up giving the package back...

Now, you may say that my mum was foolish for handing over the phone, but seeing as she is 77 and unsteady on her feet, I say it was the safest thing for her to do, as he might have tried to attack her, which would have been much more devastating than the money we may be liable to pay.

Unfortunately I came home from work a few hours later and heard about this event, and realised straight away that it was a scam. The account had been hacked into and email addresses and contact numbers changed and it's just become a total nightmare...

To make matters worse, Virgin Media are being super unhelpful, even though they can see that the account has been compromised. We keep getting phone calls from what claims to be Virgin Media from Dublin and Manila which are making me suspicious.

Can anyone offer any advice? The case has been reported to ActionFraud but apparently they take upto 7 working days to get back to you. I am super anxious that we are going to end up having to pay £1k+ for an iPhone Xs that I don't have and can't prove I don't have.

SHAFT

T4Z77 wrote: »

Hi there,
We have unfortunately become the victim of the mobile phone delivery scam. Yesterday a mobile phone got delivered to our house (even though we had not ordered one) and was accepted by my mum (aged 70+). About 2 hours later, a big burly guy claiming to be a courier managed to grab my mum's attention when she was coming back from the local shops, saying that the package had been delivered in error. My mum asked a few questions but, being innocent of dodgy dealers, ended up giving the package back...

Now, you may say that my mum was foolish for handing over the phone, but seeing as she is 77 and unsteady on her feet, I say it was the safest thing for her to do, as he might have tried to attack her, which would have been much more devastating than the money we may be liable to pay.

Unfortunately I came home from work a few hours later and heard about this event, and realised straight away that it was a scam. The account had been hacked into and email addresses and contact numbers changed and it's just become a total nightmare...

To make matters worse, Virgin Media are being super unhelpful, even though they can see that the account has been compromised. We keep getting phone calls from what claims to be Virgin Media from Dublin and Manila which are making me suspicious.

Can anyone offer any advice? The case has been reported to ActionFraud but apparently they take upto 7 working days to get back to you. I am super anxious that we are going to end up having to pay £1k+ for an iPhone Xs that I don't have and can't prove I don't have.

They won't help you at best they'll pass it to the police who'll be at least 7 days behind with any investigation.

Is it your virgin account that's been hacked?

chili1496

How did you know it was a mobile phone, if you were not aware of anything at the time?

shaun_from_Africa

chili1496 wrote: »

How did you know it was a mobile phone, if you were not aware of anything at the time?

If the OP can still access their Virgin media account online then it may show the phone that was ordered by the scammer after the account was hacked.

T4Z77

Thanks for your replies.
It was our Virgin Mobile account that was hacked into. It's an account that has not only my mobile phone account, but also phone accounts for my In-Laws. Virgin could see that the account had had the email address changed and then 2 iPhones Xs were ordered. We've been able to reclaim control of the account and secured all our other accounts by changing the passwords for all our other accounts e.g Netflix / Amazon.

My in-laws are a bit clueless with their phones and didn't see text messages which came on Sunday and Monday regarding an order of an iPhone X. When I went to check their phones on Tuesday evening, I saw all of the messages, which if I had seen earlier, would have alerted me that something was not right. Unfortunately by the time I had seen the messages, the scam had already occurred and the phone is now in the fake-courier's hands.

All in all, a total disaster.

Takmon

T4Z77 wrote: »

Thanks for your replies.
It was our Virgin Mobile account that was hacked into. It's an account that has not only my mobile phone account, but also phone accounts for my In-Laws. Virgin could see that the account had had the email address changed and then 2 iPhones Xs were ordered. We've been able to reclaim control of the account and secured all our other accounts by changing the passwords for all our other accounts e.g Netflix / Amazon.

My in-laws are a bit clueless with their phones and didn't see text messages which came on Sunday and Monday regarding an order of an iPhone X. When I went to check their phones on Tuesday evening, I saw all of the messages, which if I had seen earlier, would have alerted me that something was not right. Unfortunately by the time I had seen the messages, the scam had already occurred and the phone is now in the fake-courier's hands.

All in all, a total disaster.

It's important to realise that your account was not hacked into, if this was the case it would be thousands of people having their accounts compromised and all over the news.

In your case someone have given out the password which usually happens by some phishing attempt or maybe a virus on a device used to log into the account.

So you need to be more vigilant about phishing attempts or teach your in-laws about this if could have given out the password.

Also setup 2 factor authentication on all accounts that support this to stop this happening on other accounts. But i'm not sure if the Virgin account will support this.

davidmcn

Takmon wrote: »

It's important to realise that your account was not hacked into...In your case someone have given out the password which usually happens by some phishing attempt or maybe a virus on a device used to log into the account.

You're using a narrower definition of "hack" than is in the dictionaries.

Takmon

davidmcn wrote: »

You're using a narrower definition of "hack" than is in the dictionaries.

I understand what your saying but most of the time people don't understand that they have actually given out their password or how to stop it from happening again.

The OP has said they have "secured all our other accounts by changing the passwords for all our other accounts", which is a good first step. So they are under the impression they are secure but in fact they aren't because it doesn't address the root cause of them giving out their password.

AndyPix

Agreed, nothing was 'hacked' here , the user has given up their password.


Either by it being tricked out of them or by malware on the computer.
If it is the latter then it will likely happen again if the password reset was done on the infected device.


Best practice is to use a different trusted device to reset the passwords in question, and scan the device for malware/viruses to be sure.


Sorry for your loss