Emma Spencer was a victim of a sophisticated APP fraud, and lost thousands
A young woman has lost thousands of pounds after falling victim to a sophisticated delivery text scam.
Emma Spencer, 31, fell foul of an Authorised Push Payment (APP) scam after receiving a text at the start of December, supposedly from Royal Mail, claiming a parcel couldn’t be delivered unless she paid £2.
This has become a favourite tactic of fraudsters over the past year, as more people work from home and are ordering parcels to be delivered.
Concerned about the supposedly missed delivery, Emma filled in her bank details to make the £2 payment.
The first sign of trouble came two days later when Emma received a text from her bank, Lloyds, asking for a confirmation code for a £2,300 transaction that had been attempted on Harvey Nichols’ website using her details.
Emma, who is from London, knew she had not made the transaction – and never shopped at Harvey Nichols – so she rightly withheld the code.
Within minutes she received a phone call from someone who identified themselves as a ‘fraud investigator’ from Lloyds, who said he was going to help her protect her account.
He asked her about several transactions and she confirmed whether she had made them or not.
Believing this was genuinely a representative of Lloyds, Emma was persuaded to transfer all of the funds in her ISA and bank account, all of her life savings, to a supposedly ‘safer’ account.
She was told to move her money in amounts…
