Do you remember Tales of the Unexpected? I was routinely terrified by the 1980s’ TV adaptations of Roald Dahl’s sinister short stories, and this week had a flashback with a disturbing financial twist.
Just in time for Halloween, the actor Simon Callow is starring in a social media video series eerily reminiscent of the vintage show — but with the added frisson of fraud.
Called The Scammer House of Horrors he sits in front of a roaring fire narrating real-life horror stories about crypto scams, romance fraud and fake invoices . . . which all come to a sticky end.
Callow says he was motivated to make the films, backed by NatWest Bank, “so that people wake up to the fact that fraud is not something that happens to other people. It’s something that happens to you”.
In fact, it very nearly happened to him.
Admitting that he knows “nothing at all about money”, Callow was startled when his “bank” phoned and said there was an issue with his account. “They asked very sensible questions, they knew my account number and they were just very businesslike. It was very well acted,” he says.
His husband Sebastian smelled a rat when Callow started searching for a card reader he had never used to authorise a transaction: “I’ve had one for some time, but haven’t the slightest idea what it’s for,” he admits.
After Sebastian challenged the caller “of course, the line went dead.”
Callow realises he had a lucky escape. “I was a little shocked to realise how easy it is. I mean, they must recruit people who could be plausible.” A friend of his in his 70s was not so lucky — he was scammed out of his life savings.
Will these videos will be more effective at raising awareness than finger wagging campaigns telling people not what to do?
NatWest certainly hopes so — its own research found that 78 per cent of people didn’t know what money muling was (accepting a fee for laundering the proceeds of online fraud through your account) and 71 per cent couldn’t identify the signs of invoice redirection, where a supplier’s bank details are changed.
Santander is taking a different approach with its latest ad, featuring Ant and Dec (who are running their own bank called Antandec). Paying homage to MC Hammer’s voluminous trousers, they don fraud-detecting “scammer pants” which inflate when Ant receives a rogue text offering a 90 per cent discount on designer sunglasses.
With more than £600mn lost in the UK to fraud and scams in the first half of 2002, as annoying as you might find these ads, the issue needs more attention and a new approach to fraud prevention is urgently required.
Bank fraud soared during the “scamdemic” with victims reeled in by phishing messages about parcel deliveries and Covid jabs. Today, the cost of living crisis provides fresh “content”, preying on people’s growing financial desperation.
Advances in retail banking technology mean huge sums can be transferred in the blink of an eye. Once you’re tricked into giving the scammers your money, there is a very low chance of getting it back — although “no fault” victims will (eventually) be compensated.
So why don’t the banks go further in harnessing technology to spread the message of scam prevention?
Fraud is a fast-moving business, and most banking websites have a “latest scams” list warning. While this information is really useful, I fear few customers will come across it (either we don’t know it’s there, or because we think we’re too savvy to be scammed).
So here’s my idea — lets incentivise people to complete an “Is this a scam?” quiz on their banking apps.
People could vote “yes” or “no” on an array of scenarios, leading to information about why it’s a scam. In return for spending a few minutes educating themselves, they could be rewarded with a £1 credit, or even be able to unlock a better savings rate if they signed up to complete one quiz per month (costly — but has to be cheaper than refunding all the losses).
“Test yourself”-style quizzes fly on social media sites, so it would play well with younger customers who are increasingly the target of more tech-savvy scams — and twice as likely to fall for them as older age groups.
As a recent convert to using my phone to pay for stuff, I nearly fell for a scam text saying my Apple Pay wallet had been suspended. I was asked to click on a link: “Confirm your details and resume contactless payments.”
Because I always start from the position that texts with a link are a scam, I Googled it, and quickly found my suspicions were correct. But how clever of the fraudsters! It would be quite hard to guess a person’s bank account, but with Apple or Android pay, there’s a 50:50 chance of getting it right.
A timely one for October would be the spate of fake texts asking us to “click here and claim your £400 energy discount”. The central message should be: “This is a scam because the discount is automatically applied by your energy supplier and you don’t need to do anything to claim it.”
A lesser-known scam is fake loan websites, which appear to offer really low interest rates to credit-impaired borrowers. I fear these could do a brisk trade in the run-up to Christmas as people become desperate for cash.
You’re asked to pay an admin fee of £400 before CheapoLoans.com will release the money.
Of course, this is a scam, but the latest UK Finance statistics show a 45 per cent year-on-year increase in advance fee fraud. In a poll this week, one in six Britons said the rising cost of living meant they were more likely to respond to an unprompted approach from someone offering a loan.
Training customers to spot this could be supplemented with details of not-for-profit lenders who provide an affordable alternative when mainstream banks refuse to lend, but suffer from a lack of awareness — a double win!
Technology can also help with fraud prevention in other ways.
My parents are members of a Neighbourhood Watch WhatsApp group (a legacy of lockdown) and frequently get updates about common scams. They know full well that if they ever get a WhatsApp pertaining to be from my “new number” because I’ve lost my phone, it will be a scam!
Considering the rising numbers of people falling victim to scams, it’s still quite rare for people to go public and admit they were conned, or nearly came a cropper. I applaud Simon Callow for speaking out about his experiences — staying silent about fraud only hands a chilling advantage to the scammers.
Claer Barrett is the FT’s consumer editor and the author of ‘What They Don’t Teach You About Money’. [email protected]; Twitter and Instagram: @Claerb