“Hi mum,” the first message starts, “I’ve lost my phone.” It carries on with a tale of woe: for some reason the sender has also been locked out of his or her bank account.
Luckily a friend is often on hand to help – it’s their phone that the message comes from, apparently – and if you could just transfer some money to their account that would be great. Alternatively, you might be asked to pay the rent, direct to a landlord, or foot some other urgent bill that has arrived at this time of crisis.
