A great-grandmother from Nottingham was scammed out of £21,000 after she received a text message telling her she needed to order a coronavirus test.
Dorothy Baker, 81, was duped out of money by sophisticated fraudsters as she payed 'postage' for the 'test' which never arrived.
Some time later, Dorothy received a phone call from a man purporting to be from her bank, saying Dorothy’s account had been compromised and she needed to transfer all of her money out of it. The call was a scam.
Dorothy, who lives with her husband in Nottingham, said: “We were eating tea at around 5.30pm when I got a phone call. They said they were the HSBC fraud people. They said my bank account was at risk and they needed me to transfer my money.”
Believing the fraudsters, who said it would be better to split the money up while it was allocated to a new ‘safe’ account, Dorothy made a number of transactions, clearing her current account of £21,000.
“They sounded so professional,” she continued.
“I had to transfer multiple times. They were giving me different accounts to transfer the money into, and then the phone went dead. The next morning I got a phone call again.
"They said they would send me new account details with a new card and a new number. I was waiting for this card to come through and it never did.”
Dorothy, who has two daughters, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, then visited her local HSBC branch where staff broke the news the phone calls had been part of an elaborate scam.
She said: “I went into the bank and they phoned the fraud squad while I was there.
"They said they would look into it, but then I got a letter saying it was my fault and I should have known. I told my husband we could forget the money because the bank had said it was my fault. He told me it wasn’t my fault really, I just trusted the person on the phone.
“I couldn’t understand why they [HSBC] didn’t phone me to say something was happening. They must have noticed.”
Dorothy called upon the expertise of fraud specialists CEL Solicitors after her daughter heard an ad for their services on the radio.
“My daughter had heard about CEL Solicitors and suggested I get in touch,” Dorothy added. “They were great and I would recommend them to anyone.”
CEL challenged HSBC’s initial decision with the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). £1,099 was recovered by HSBC and the FOS awarded Dorothy the remaining £18,052 with 8% interest.
Dorothy, who worked in an office for a logistics company before retirement, said: “I couldn’t believe it. I felt so lucky to get the money back. I’ve definitely learnt a lesson from it. Now if I get any phone calls like that I just block them.”
Paul Hampson from CEL Solicitors said: “Unfortunately, frauds such as the one suffered by Dorothy are not uncommon. Criminals use sophisticated ways to convince people to part with their hard-earned money, which makes it even more distressing when victims discover the truth.
“In this case we were pleased to be able to recover the money from the Financial Ombudsman on the victim’s behalf.”
