A week or so ago, I received a text from DPD, the delivery company, advising me that their driver had been unable to deliver a parcel and could I contact them to arrange a redelivery. This would involve a small fee, said the text. My first thought was simple: what utter bollocks this was, a very obvious scam. It didn’t even mention my name, just Dear Valued Customer. A trained monkey could have worked this one out. But today I discovered that victims have been scammed out of the best part of a quarter of a million quid. The way the scam continues is even more incredible. Literally so.
A few days after the small payment is made, the victim’s bank calls them to say a number of suspicious transactions have been made from their account and they now need to transfer their money to a safe account. Except it isn’t their bank. But when the small redelivery payment was made, the fraudsters made a note of it. Then, they emptied the victims’ accounts. How could anyone fall for this? Apparently, quite easily. £242,000 worth.
Social networks are full of messages urging people to beware of some new scam or another, the assumption being, I imagine, that the messengers think their friends are a bit dim and need warning. I suppose I shouldn’t be too cynical about this because there are a lot of gullible people out there. Just look at the anti-vaxxers, the Brexiters who have no idea why Brexit is a good idea but still think it is because the bloke down the pub said it was and those who reckon Boris Johnson is a great bloke who tells it like it is. You can fool some of the people all of the time, I’m afraid.
Perhaps I am steeled to all this stuff. I get endless phone calls supposedly from Amazon Prime, BT and Microsoft warning about scams when it is blindingly obvious they are the scammers. When a bloke with a thick Indian accent introduces himself as Kevin, as the Microsoft Windows man did yesterday, I immediately begin to smell a rat. Especially as I don’t use Microsoft Windows, or, for that matter BT or Amazon Prime.
There is a golden rule to follow. If you get an email out of the blue, then the first reaction should be to assume it’s a scam. Then, work backwards to see if there is any possible way in which it’s true. That way, I tend to find, more and more tell tale signs begin to emerge. Trust me: this really works.
Just as I finished writing, another text arrived from DPD. Dear Valued Customer, it began. Not fucking valuable enough to know my actual name though, eh?
