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Catherine LeMay said her childrens’ accounts had been targeted in a convincing scheme that led her to transfer her money into another account. Mrs LeMay explained that she responded to a text purporting to be from Royal Mail about a missed parcel and clicked on a link to rebook it.
The scam text message is usually from an unknown sender, and it asks for payment of a delivery fee and includes a link to a website to make that payment.
The website has a very similar look and feel to that of Royal Mail’s, it even included links to Royal Mail’s social media feeds.
The mother-of-two, who lives in Glasgow’s west end, said this had happened during the school run while she was “rushing and flustered” and so she hadn’t checked the authenticity of the website.
She just paid £1.15 for a re-delivery.She mentioned the text to a friend who warned her that it could be a scam.
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Mrs LeMay continued: “I looked again at the website and realised it was a replica and quickly phoned Santander to cancel my card. The card hadn’t been used so I was fairly calm at this point.”
Two days later, again at a time when she was preparing to collect her children from school, she received a phone call from “Mark from Santander” who wanted to discuss some unusual activity on her account.
She said: “I queried whether he was from the bank and he asked me to open the Internet and check the phone number.
“It was indeed a Santander number. He stayed on the phone for over an hour telling me about the parcel ‘Fishing Scam’ that 36,000 people across the UK has been hit by, including me.”
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She made two payments to this new account but while doing so her husband called to tell her that Santander had been in touch to alert the family to the fraud.
At this point the fraudster had hung up “with all the family’s savings”.
She said she had “hardly stopped crying” since it had happened and had reported the scam to the police.
She felt a sense of relief as Santander agreed to deposit the funds she had lost back into her account.
On its website, Royal Mail explains how scam delivery texts operate and what people should look out for.
The postal service explained: “Fraudsters and criminals want to lure you into giving them something which they can use to their advantage.
“In a scam email or text message, their goal is often to convince you to click a link (this is known as ‘phishing’).
“Once clicked, you may be sent to a dodgy website which could download viruses onto your computer, or steal your passwords and personal information.”
