‘WhatsApp screen sharing scam lost me £20,000’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1mlx1n1e5no

by Aggressive_Plates

45 comments

  1. Digital darwinism. People only have themselves to blame for falling for these when banks are practically screaming at them to not give personal details away to anyone.

  2. Wow 2 scams potentially by the same people. They’re eating tonight.

  3. Problem now all the call centres are in India you can’t instantly tell if it’s a scam

  4. i love that second picture of her holding up her phone where she’s searched “whatsapp” in google images

  5. “At one point, he persuaded her to take out a £25,000 loan, apparently to “block” another loan he claimed had been taken out.”

    I mean, you really can’t legislate or provide guide rails for everyone – the level of naivity to accept a scammer telling you to take out a loan to recover your scammed money is just unfixable.

  6. The article shows the victim is a perfect example of how not to react.

    How difficult is it to understand: “when called by someone claiming to be from your bank, end the call and phone the bank yourself using a different phone and dialling the number on the back of your card or from the bank’s web site.”

  7. “Yeah banks always call me on WhatsApp, ask me to screenshare, and tell me to take out massive loans. This is completely normal.”

    It’s difficult to feel sympathy for people with so much more money than me suffering the consequences of their actions. Why didn’t she just check to see if there was a 1,500 pound payment made in her own transactions?

  8. There’s an older relative on my Facebook who repeatedly posts angry statuses directed at Samsung, demanding “his money” – it appears a group of scammers posing as Samsung promised him £80,000, and he believes it. Even when told directly that it’s a scam, he doesn’t believe us!

    Doesn’t seem to wonder why Samsung would want to give him that amount of money, or wonder why they’re not responding to him. It’s fascinating that many digitally illiterate or older (or both) people seem to truly buy into these things.

  9. I’m struggling to find any sympathy here. Do I feel bad that someone lost 20 grand? Of course. But that’s where it ends for me.
    She was taken in despite warnings everywhere about scams. Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t hand out info over the phone. Any time the bank, the phone company or broadband provider etc call me, I hang up and call the customer service number on the website. If it’s legit, they confirm it and they don’t mind. Being willfully ignorant is not an excuse in this day and age.

    One wonders though, how much of a crossover is there between those who fall victims to scams like this, and those who go on social media and post baseless lies from “news” sources they found or were sent.

  10. Banks can’t protect everyone especially the stupid

  11. Felicity Campbell is a fucking idiot. That is the problem here. They should shame her for it. And point to people and say “look at the idiot – don’t do that or this will happen!” in the adverts about security.

  12. Seems like she cost herself the money by being naive/silly

  13. Jeez how long was she on the phone to him for…transfer this and this and between this account and that account o and take a loan!

  14. Articles like this are exhausting, because the focus on the user’s peril and share very little about how the scam was carried out or how to be aware and avoid them.

    Two things stand out for me, apart from the obvious “don’t accept WhatsApp calls from someone who says they’re your bank”:

    1. How did the caller have access to her recent transactions?

    2. How did the caller get the money out of her Wise account?

    On #2 I guess here is that the caller was able to see enough info to log in as her, including maybe a 2fa prompt. But it sounds like there’s some missing detail about #1.

  15. “we need to move your money to keep it safe”

    What do these people think that FSCS bank protection is for?

  16. A lot of victim blaming going on here! Some of these scammers have been practicing for years, and they are pretty elaborate.

    Sure the lady might not have excellent security knowledge, but the scammers had information about recent transactions etc. which can sometimes result in them being believable.

    It’s sad that people have to be aware of these things, not everyone is aware and especially a lot of the older generation seem to fall for this a lot.

    Criminals bent on stealing a living off vulnerable and uneducated people suck. The fact she fell for it isn’t something to slate her on..

    Imagine if this happened to your elderly relatives!

  17. Anyone know how the scammer knew her recent transactions?

  18. Governments should run public safety campaigns like they did for child road safety on tv.

  19. Tell you what working in a fraud role at a bank I certainly wont ever run out of work with folk like this around.

  20. For 90 minutes she screen shared and moved money from her accounts to random Western union accounts he told her to….?

    I genuinely don’t believe the banks should cover any of the costs here at some point it stops being any sort of guise of a scam, there needs to be some element of personal responsibility. 

  21. How do these people even get £20,000 in the first place ?

  22. The scammers are so good at it. I very nearly fell for one. Honestly, guy deserved an Oscar.

    They should advertise that all accounts can be shut down in app.

    Shut it down and call us.

    The end

  24. Some people need basic training before being allowed to own a phone or a bank account it seems. Doesn’t surprise me at the number of people in this country that can be scanned though, some people clearly believe anything.

  25. “In response, he told her details of her address and recent transactions”

    Ok, here I am confused. I understand you can find out name and address, but how could the scammer know her recent transaction history?

  26. Everyone is scammable. Even people who work in counterfraud get scammed. We all have weaknesses and these guys are very good at what they do. We never know how we will react when we are under pressure and think everything is on the line. We just need to be cautious, empathetic, educate ourselves on the latest techniques, and WARN THE OLDER PEOPLE AROUND YOU. This new digital and scammy world can’t be easy at all for the non digitally native.

  27. The scammers could end every message with an x and these idiots would still fall for it

  28. How is western union still a business .. every time there is a fraud, scam call case eventually it ends up with a transfer to western union to get the money physically out. Why not a 3 day hold at western union for sums over 1000 USD ? 

  29. Some miserable sods in the comments section. Instead of hating on the criminals, you people are hating on the victim and in a really mean way. You’re making yourself feel good about yourself by punching down. Also, time changes a person. Will you not fall victim to a crime later in life? Why do scammers target people, especially in their 50s, 60s, and later?

  30. I get there are people who aren’t tech savvy but like come on, this is ridiculous. My nan is 86 and she wouldn’t fall for this nonsense

  31. Yeah maybe if we let people lose their money they might fucking learn.

  33. Hmm as much as she is stupid , this is the problem with banks forcing everyone to do online banking.

    The banks seemed so focused on forcing you into it without a second thought and expect users all to pick it up , again this person is clearly stupid , but the banks should be forced to sending training to people before they are allowed to provided online banking to users , the training will consist of scams.

    It should also then provide them with a profile of how lightly you are to get scammed , abit like car insurance , if your more lightly your money is harder to move etc , and the only way you can change that is by taking course etc that the bank provide until you can pass a certain level of, and this should be mandatory training for all users if you fail to complete it , moving large amount of money above certain levels gets blocked.

    You might think the above would cost a lot but how much do the banks already loss per year to fraud.

  34. > Mrs Campbell said: “If that one instruction had come in isolation, I would have said… ‘what planet do you think I live on?’

    Because what happened in the previous 90 minutes didn’t suggest anything strange at all.

  35. She’s lucky they refunded anything at all. That level of stupidity is breathtaking. Shouldn’t be using online banking at all if you’re that gullible.

  36. She’s lucky to have received a single penny of it back.

    The article may state that she lost £20K, but she did recover £6K from one bank, 6K from another and a final 2K from the last, totalling 14K.

    I get that a 6 grand loss is still a lot of money, it is to me also, but in her shoes I’d be thanking god for any of it being recoverable, a lot of people in her position don’t see even a little bit of it back, never mind the majority of it!

  37. I have absolutely no sympathy for her. I was trying to write a longer more considered comment, but I just can’t. She’s a moron and didn’t deserve to have it refunded.

  38. > For the next 90 minutes, the man instructed Mrs Campbell to shuffle different sums of money between these accounts – and also into a separate Western Union account – watching the transactions go through using screen share, all under the guise of helping her.

    > “All the while he’s saying to me, ‘we are managing to recover the money, but we’ve got to act fast because it’s going out fast’,” she said.

    Christ almighty. It’s like that scene where they block a hacker by having two people on a single keyboard. Because your bank would totally have you moving money around accounts like it’s doing a fucking barrel roll to avoid being stolen

  39. well i guess its one positive that ill never have to worry about stuff like this….

  40. “he told her details of her address and recent transactions – all of which were correct. ” I understand names and addresses are easy to get but how did he find her recent transactions 🤔

  41. Do banking apps even allow you to screen record? I’ve never tried obviously. How was she on the phone with the scammer for so long?

  42. There are more people being scammed now than ever.

    You can put as many words together as you like to try and change my mind, but I know that if the Government hadn’t have taken control of the Internet, a lot less people would be getting scammed right now. There are too many scammers on a platform we all gave to the government because they told us it would be safer… safer means less scammers, so why are there more scammers now than ever?

    Because it works how it’s supposed to work.

    They’re happy with you being scammed… It gives them fuel for a fire that they set themselves.

  43. This is why I love banking with Starling.
    They offer no phone support whatsoever and are very clear on this, so I can never be scammed. All support is done via the in app chat which is online 24/7.

    If someone rings me from ‘Starling’ or ‘The Bank’ it’s never going to be them.

  44. She was on world at one today of you want a listen. Basically she is saying the scam was he groomed her.

    She was giving multiple messages by the back saying are you being asked to send money by someone.

    She still got most of it back

  45. The problem is that these kinds of scams are huge operations, mostly out of India. There are people trying to take them down while gathering evidence to the police in India but they get back online within a month or two. But its getting worse especially when they’re buying data leak dumps that happen when very large companies fail to protect the data they have.

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