Energy discount phishing: Robbed of £25,000 in text scam

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Diane Jones was walking her dogs when she received the fake text

Cost of living scams are on the rise, as fraudsters prey on people's anxiety around saving money, experts have told the BBC.

Action Fraud says it has received reports of hundreds of different scams about energy support alone.

Diane Jones was pottering around the house when she was sent a text message telling her to claim her £400 energy discount.

As a rheumatoid arthritis sufferer, she receives disability benefit and assumed the £400 payment was connected.

But almost as soon as Diane, 65, entered her bank details, she realised she was a victim of fraud and contacted her bank, HSBC.

"I'd been rushing around that day and just clicked on it when it came on my phone. My mind was in a muddle. As soon as I did it, I realised I shouldn't have done," she says.

Households across the UK are being given £400 off their energy bills to help with rising costs, but it is automatically applied to their bills and is not something people need to apply for.


Diane had almost £25,000 stolen in the elaborate scam

Unfortunately for Diane, an office administrator who lives in Eastbourne, that wasn't the end of the matter.

She was subsequently assured, via HSBC's online chat feature, that her bank card had been cancelled to protect her from further scams.

When she was contacted later that week, by someone purporting to be from the bank's fraud team, she assumed they were following up on the earlier scam.

'He was so clever'

"I didn't doubt the man for one moment - he was so clever. He was talking and talking, not giving me any time to think," she says.

The man persuaded Diane that her account had been compromised and she needed to transfer her money to a new bank account, via an app which he asked her to download.

He also pretended he needed her help uncovering fraudsters working internally at the bank, and gave her a script of things to say when HSBC rang querying the transaction.

It wasn't until a colleague later searched online for the caller's incoming phone number that Diane realised the man was not from HSBC after all.

By that time, fraudsters had stolen £24,800 - all of her life savings, and her overdraft.

She was distraught.

"I was in such a state when I found out what had happened - one of my sons had to get me from work and drive me home," she says.

HSBC told Diane it had no record of the original attempt to cancel her card. It initially refused to reimburse her the money, as she had transferred it herself and had given misleading answers to the bank when contacted.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63412297

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I always wonder how this people get hold of your phone numbers, most likely inside job, whenever they phone me I always tell them I cannot hear you I am in fish market, write to me.

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Ok cleaver man got your money but how can those fraudsters open a bank account without identity and fixed address? Even after they disappear from fixed address the bank will have his identity and his photo why the law cannot arrest him? Another point if she was on any benefit the money must be going in her account therefore why she did not realise they are ask for her bank account again?