I nearly got scammed

The other day I was working for a printing company delivering their products in north London, and I pulled over on a road outside Enfield and took a fifteen-minute break to drink my coffee. Just after I pulled away, someone called me on the phone and told me they were from my bank, and wanted to talk to me about a suspicious payment they said had been made from my bank account. This turned out to be from an app that I never used, and was made, they said, from a city I had never been to, using a phone of a type which I had never used either. I told them I was fairly clued-up about recognising scams; that I did not respond to emails purportedly from Amazon or other online businesses unless they used my name (the scams will just use the name part of your email address or address you as “Dear Customer” or similar). They told me they were carrying out an ‘investigation’ and determined that it was my online banking that had been compromised, and needed to give me a new sort code and account number. I then drove to South Mimms services while they held the line, and they told me to open my online banking app while they talked me through making a payment into my supposed new account.

It was when I had actually parked up again that I started to have suspicions about the callers. They called on a barred number; I told them I needed it to come from the bank’s actual fraud line. They of course know that, and a little-known fact is that a company can use a fake caller ID that looks like a real phone number, which is exactly what they did. Once they told me the bank account and I entered the sort code, which is for a different bank to the one I use, the scam became obvious, yet still they continued to try and explain away the fact that the sort code is bank-specific and a new account with my bank could not have the same sort code as one with another bank. I told them that I would ring the bank’s fraud line myself in my own good time, and they continued to talk over me about how ‘serious’ this was, but when I hung up, they did not call back. I did try to get through to the bank’s fraud line, but when I could not get through in quick enough time and it became clear that the callers were fraudsters and that the “suspicious payment” was also a lie (and must have been, as nobody uses online banking for the purpose specified), I realised there was no need to continue trying.

I would certainly have bridled at transferring my whole bank balance into the “new account” although perhaps not at a token amount (a few pence, say), though I am sure others would not. I knew that if a bank needed to set up a new account for me or change my account number, they could just do it from their end without any action from me, much as when they need to issue a new debit card. But it’s unnerving that these scammers kept me on the phone quite so long. I can’t remember if they used my name, or got the name of my bank right, details that scammers do not know because they call you at random (some of them will name a bank, which may or may not be yours). They caught me at a time when I could not assess the situation carefully; I had just got off my break and was in a hurry, and at other times during the calls I was actually driving. At one point the initial caller told me he would put me on hold while he transferred me to his ‘supervisor’, but unlike when an actual company puts you on hold, no music played; the line just went silent, and I hung up. One thing that is greatly useful for scammers is that the mobile phone networks allow fake caller IDs that look like phone numbers. This problem needs to be fixed, urgently. (I also could not get in touch with my mobile provider to report that I had received scam calls; the operator line just redirects me to their website, which has no way of contacting them to report fraud attempts.)

If you get a call like this out of the blue, tell the caller you will call your bank yourself, then hang up. Don’t let them keep you talking, however convincing they sound. You probably have never heard the voice of a scammer, only read their misspelled emails; they sound quite calm and professional, at least until you challenge them. The best way to avoid getting taken in is to cut them off quickly.

Image copyright 2023 Matthew J Smith