Fraudsters stole £40k from Hertfordshire man via phone scam

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Fraudsters stole £40k from Hertfordshire man via phone scam

Julian Paszkiewicz

Radio 4, You & Yours

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Stephen said dealing with the fraud had taken him seven hours a day to resolve since it first began three weeks ago

A man targeted by fraudsters who got his mobile phone number from an energy company said he often woke up in the night thinking “what next?”.

Stephen, from Hertfordshire, had more than £40,000 taken from a savings account after his name and email address address was used to get the information from EDF.

Within 48 hours of his mobile phone number being divulged, his accounts with O2, Nationwide Building Society and Virgin Media had all been compromised.

EDF said such incidents were rare but it took them seriously and added: “We are sorry for the difficulties this fraudulent caller has caused Stephen.”

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The energy company said its verification processes were followed but it was subsequently made aware the call had been fraudulent

The man, who is being identified only as Stephen, told BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours programme he was alerted to the criminal action on 3 February.

He received a text from O2 confirming he had changed his password.

After telling O2 he had not changed his password, the firm said he must have been a victim of a Sim swap scam, which sees his mobile number used and transferred to a new Sim card.

The next morning, EDF emailed him asking for feedback on his recent contact with the company, despite him not having made that call.

He was told its fraud department would get in touch but a week later had heard nothing.

Accounts raided

Meanwhile, O2 confirmed his new sim card was on its way, but it was connected to a different mobile phone number.

Its shop staff told him to check his emails and he discovered from his email provider Virgin Media that someone had changed his password.

As he was trying to fix that, criminals raided his accounts.

On 5 February, he could not access his Nationwide credit card. The building society then upped his security.

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He became aware of the fraud when O2 sent him a text confirming he had changed his password, which he had not

Worse news was to come, when he learned his National Savings and Investments password had been changed.

“After an hour of talking to different people there, they said, ‘You’ve actually taken out a very large amount of premium bonds, over £40,000’,” said Stephen.

‘£50 to close the case’

After more than a week, EDF finally responded about the call it thought Stephen made at 11:00 GMT on 3 February.

EDF explained the fraudster had his name and email address and had asked EDF to give them his mobile number, which the company did.

“I said, ‘Why would you do that?’ They said the person had gone through security. ‘With a name and email address’, I asked?,” he said.

“EDF said, ‘Yes’ – and then offered me a £50 goodwill gesture to close the case.

“I was just amazed and I thought: ‘How can they do this and does that mean all my other bank and building society accounts are compromised as well?’.”

The call from the fraudster to EDF happened three hours before O2 received a request to move his number the sim-swap scam.

Criminals do it to bypass two-factor authentication to change passwords and access anything else you need a code from a text message for.

Stephen reported the fraud to Hertfordshire Police and it was passed it on to Action Fraud as the crime was believed to have been committed outside the county.

In 2021,

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, received about 500 reports – last year this had grown to more than 2,000.

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BBC One’s Scam Interceptors host Nick Stapleton said this type of fraud was devastating because victims were unaware until it was too late

Cybersecurity expert and host of BBC One’s Scam Interceptors, Nick Stapleton, advised people to think about what they shared on social media.

“If you’ve got a social media account that’s not protected and has things like a picture of your dog with its name underneath, or of your family with their names tagged, scammers can use those to get past security questions,” he said.

He also recommended adding a PIN number to the sim card, which can be done in a phone’s settings, and the use of authenticator apps to generate random codes, instead of ones sent by text.

Stephen believed poor customer service helps criminals by giving them more time.

“Some nights I just wake up in the night thinking, what next? It’s been very difficult really,” he said.

National Savings and Investments said it had refunded him the money taken from his account.

Nationwide Building Society said the fraudulent purchases were blocked, adding that as well as meeting its legal obligations, it needed to balance security with customer service.

O2 Virgin Media confirmed the scammer telephoned its call centre requesting a new sim and had hacked Stephen’s emails.

A spokesperson said he had been offered “£125 as a gesture of goodwill”.

EDF, which has nearly six million *** customers, said: “The security procedures were followed. We subsequently recognise this was fraud.

“These incidents are rare, but we take them seriously and are reviewing our processes. We have also discussed this incident with the

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#Fraudsters #stole #40k #Hertfordshire #man #phone #scam

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