Good Morning Britain's Katy Rickett has issued an urgent warning alongside her husband Adam after they were defrauded of nearly £50,000 in a horror bank scam.
The Hollyoaks star, 44, took to his social media to share the news he had been scammed out of tens of thousands of pounds in an elaborate fraud, claiming the scammers “knew everything about him”.
Adam said he received a text purporting to be from Barclays bank warning that there had been “suspicious activity” on his account and then received a call from an 0845 number, claiming to be the bank’s fraud department.
The married couple appeared on Good Morning Britain to detail the ordeal to hosts Susanna Reid and Ed Balls on Wednesday morning.
The 38-year-old confirmed that their bank Barclays has since reimbursed the couple with the defrauded funds after assessing their case, but said there are lessons members of the public could learn from the scam.
Speaking from Cheshire alongside husband Adam, she said: “As many people who I've interviewed in the past will say, there’s nothing like something happening to you to make you frantically look for every answer you can go for.
“We have pulled our hair out over the last seven days. He had three hours of hell and we went through everything with a fine-tooth comb.”
She continued: “The reason we wanted to come on today is to try and help anybody – even one person – not get scammed. This guy was his best friend, he was stopping him from getting defrauded, although it turned out he was the fraudster.
“So if your bank rings you, hang up the phone and call the number on the back of your card so you 100 percent know you are getting through to your bank. We’ve learnt that the hard way.”
She added: “If this happens to you, and this is what we’ve tortured ourselves with over the last week, it’s actually a real gamble whether you will get your money back.
“It's up to [the banks] whether they deem you to be ‘grossly negligent’. According to Which?, only 42 percent get their money back through the bank’s scheme.
“You then go onto the financial ombudsman, which has a 70 percent success rate, but that can take months and years.
“We know people in our town that have had something similar happen to them and are still waiting to get their money back. We’ve had people massage us saying, ‘Our mental health is going down the drain because we’re still waiting’, so we want this to change for other people.”
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV.
