An elderly woman has lost £10,000 after she was duped by scammers into downloading an app.
The bank was able to prevent another £10,000 being paid out.
Police say the woman had received several calls to her landline in relation to her Amazon Prime account and the scammers asked details about her payment methods.
The scammers then passed her through to what she was told to be the ‘National Cyber Crime Agency’ to speak to an agent. She was on hold for several minutes.
The scammers proceeded to defraud the woman out of £10,000 through a bank transfer.
This took nearly an hour of convincing by the scammer which included tricking the woman into downloading a remote access app from the app store which accessed her smartphone without her knowledge. Using this app the scammers were able to view EVERYTHING on her phone, say police.
The woman’s bank contacted after being alerted to the suspicious and large amounts being paid out.
The bank was able to stop another £10,000 being paid out. However, the scammers continued to try to contact the woman again by phone several times.
ADVICE FROM POLICE:
Police say the National Crime Agency (NCA) will never contact you asking for your bank information.
No bank, financial institution or government body will ever ask you to download an app which gives them remote access to your phone or computer. These apps are widely available and have genuine uses but are abused by scammers.
Being a week before Christmas makes this especially stomach churning, say police.
Please be vigilant. If you get one of these calls and have the slightest suspicion that something’s fishy going on then hang up and ring the police. These scammers do this day in and day out and can be very convincing.
A genuine financial institution will never contact you out of the blue to get you to transfer large amounts of money into a random account.
Lisburn Road LPT are now working with the vulnerable woman and her bank to try to recover the money.