Security
Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2020 11:54 pm
Quick word of warning. There are increasing numbers of scams involving gift vouchers starting up. A friend just got caught by one.
He was contacted by, apparently, a company that had provided him with computer assistance at home. They claimed to be closing down and wished to transfer a sum back to him. They transferred £1000 more than 'they meant to'. They phoned the friend and 'confessed their error' and asked him not to pay it back to them as cash because they were closing their account, but to purchase a certain type if gift voucher and let them have the voucher numbers. Which he did. Then he thought it a bit odd so he went down to the bank and asked them to cancel the voucher purchase, and got his money back.
In the meantime the 'company' had blocked his computer entirely until they got their vouchers. A few hours later he called me. Luckily I've seen a few articles about the 'pay us back in vouchers' scams.
They are a money laundering scam. You get cash from them, then pay it back to them as vouchers. The cash, which will have come from some other unfortunate's account, is tracked to your account at some point and may well be retrieved back to the bank. But you have purchased hundreds of pounds of vouchers and sent them on. That leaves you many pounds down.
It seems that many companies have been involved. Amazon has had a pretty big hit with its vouchers being used.
Essentially if anyone wants you to swap cash to vouchers as part of a business transaction take a looong think before doing that.
The friend got great help from the Fraud office at their bank. They did have to wait over an hour to get through to them which says a lot about the level of fraud and scamming just now. The sad bit- the computer is probably stuffed full of nasties. To stop any wifi access to it we wrapped it in tin foil and packed it away in the oven (switched off!!!) for the night.
The computer is old and a decision has been made to start off with a new one and then get all passwords changed etc...
