Being cheated by a scammer is never nice. Being cheated when I should have known better makes it worse. Being cheated by a scammer who stole over half of our life-savings was totally demoralising. This blog tells the story of what happened.

It is rare that I am ‘demoralised’ but this is exactly how I felt. For six awful days, and so until the scam was resolved and our stolen money returned, my life was dominated by anxiety, disbelief and uncertainty coupled with feelings of hurt, helplessness, vulnerability and confusion ! And in all this, there were hours in the day when I could do little but worry and at night stay awake puzzling. 

In all, the scam, which I now see as being designed with precision and implemented with meticulous care, lasted seventeen days with four distinct phases. 

In Phase One, the scammers spent a week setting me up and with my ‘help’ lining up the bank’s systems for the theft. On day one I received a text message along the lines ‘This is a message from Bank X’ (here they gave the name of our bank which they had already discovered). ‘We have noted that a payment of £55.00 was made today using your debit card numbered’ (correct number given) ‘in a shop in Manchester.  If you do not recognise this payment tap on ‘N’ ’.  I tapped on ‘N’ and thought nothing further.

Three days later I was phoned by a woman, calling herself Jessica, who said she worked for Bank X and was ringing about the Manchester incident; she wanted to tell me that the bank had blocked the Manchester payment. I said I was grateful and there the conversation ended. 

Next day another call from Jessica again speaking from the bank, this time saying that our account had received £20.00 and that the sender had since contacted them to say it was an error and asked if it could be returned. I became suspicious and to check that she was genuine I asked her to tell me the exact sum in one of our accounts (we have two). She could only know the sum if she had direct access to it. She immediately responded with the correct figure; I was persuaded that she was genuine and agreed that she should pay back the £20.00 – which she did !

A day later Jessica called again now claiming that the bank suspected fraud involving our account and in order to investigate it, she asked that I do not open the account for one week. At the end of the week she would phone to report what she had found.

In Phase Two, during the next week, all was quiet as far as I was concerned. However, over the following six days Jessica and her team secretly transferred large chunks of our money, indeed over half our life savings, from our account to theirs.

Phase Three started a week later when Jessica phoned at the appointed time saying that her investigation was not complete and asked that I did not log onto my account for a further week. At that point I became  very suspicious and told her that I thought she was a scammer and put the phone down and rang the bank. In response, the bank’s fraud office confirmed that over the previous week there had been a vast loss of money from our account. They then took details about what had happened and told me what to do immediately to secure our account. There followed umpteen further investigatory calls from the bank and then, extraordinarily, after four days of their investigation they phoned to say that all the money had been found and returned and was now safely back in our account. 

Phase Four started with much rejoicing and enormous relief, and culminated with a dinner to celebrate. In addition, following the bank’s demands, days were spent changing the passwords etc on my iPad and phone and having both professionally ‘cleaned’. 

After all this I was left ‘bruised’ and with mixed feelings of relief that the money was returned and ‘what-if’ moments when I asked myself what would have happened had the theft gone unresolved! And in all  this time I was very aware that during the week between discovery and resolution the anxiety I suffered was truly horrible, a feeling made particularly awful by the idea that the scammer had been able to manipulate our account from the inside. Only now, a fortnight after resolution, has my mind recovered – well almost – and I am back to feeling my normal self.

This blog tells the story as best I can of what happened. And in writing it, part of me has ‘exorcised’ what was a wretched nightmare. I thank you in advance, for letting me indulge myself in this way!

The illustration is simply there to sign up this issue’s topic; no picture could possibly capture the turmoil and demoralisation caused by the scam!

For helping write this blog I would like to thank Julian, Terry, John Rohan and Vivien