An incoming call arrives on my mobile phone. The number is 01490 590081 and its from Corwen in Wales. I have no idea where Corwen is – turns out it’s in Denbighshire and I have no idea where that is, either – but I answer it anyway. I have been trying to make contact with an old friend who lives, or lived, in Wales, though not Corwen or Denbighshire. I answer it and it’s Kevin! Kevin is speaking very quickly and I ask him to slow down a little, but it makes no difference when he does, because he has a thick Indian accent. He informs me that he is ringing me from Sky because there is a problem with my account. Of course there is: I don’t have a Sky account.
I ask “Kevin’ how things are in Corwen today. He doesn’t have a clue what I am talking about because he’s talking to me from a dodgy call centre in India, so he ploughs on with his prepared script, explaining that if the problem with my Sky account isn’t sorted out the service will be terminated. I feign concern, offering to get my bank account details so I do not lose access to my favourite shows. “Just hold the line,” I say. “I’ll be right back.” A few moments later: “I’m back now and I know what you are, which is a scammer, trying to defraud me, basically the lowest form of human life, an absolute scumbag (and much, much worse)” until I hear the click on the other end of the line. I am in a state of controlled anger because I hate frauds and scammers and only yesterday I read a terrible story about what they had done to a couple of senior citizens.
The radio presenter Andy Bush’s parents were scammed out of their life savings after seeing a bogus advert online. The advert featured a photograph of Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis and it said that if they ploughed their £20,000 nest egg into overseas accounts, which would then be converted into cryptocurrencies, they would gain up to 8% returns on their ‘investment’. It must have seemed too good to be true and of course it was.
Mr Bush’s parents are in their late seventies, which makes the scam all the more appalling. People work hard all their lives, save up a few quid in order to enjoy their autumn years and some scammer comes along and cons them out of it. I read the story and thought: how do people fall for this stuff? But a couple of years ago, I got a scam message, apparently from a friend via Facebook Messenger, replied and then found myself locked out of my own account. It was quite upsetting, too. I felt such a twat. How could I fall for something so simple? But the message sounded urgent, I replied with urgency and within seconds my password had been changed and I couldn’t access the account. It took several days of arsing about, dealing with Facebook’s clunky AI response team, but I got the account back, together with all the photos and information that had been stolen. I hope it was a lesson learned, but no one is immune from this stuff.
Who doesn’t want money for nothing? That’s how the fraud works. You’ve got a few quid lying around for a sunny day and someone says, you can have even more money just like that. Just download this app, tell us your bank details and we will do the rest. And the rest is stealing all your money. We can be greedy, the caller may sound incredibly genuine and kind, we may think the best of everyone with some justification because most people are decent, honest people. We don’t think there can be people around who have a hole where a conscience should be and are more than happy to ruin people’s lives just to make a few quid.
You will get these calls, too, and I hope you do something along the lines of what I did and not what poor Mr Bush’s parents did. I repeat the line I used earlier in this blog: if someone offers you something that appears to be too good to be true, then it usually is.
