Elderly woman scammed out of £10,000 by ‘Amazon Prime’ fraudsters

An elderly woman has lost thousands of pounds after being targeted by scammers.

Earlier this month it was was reported that an fraudsters has been targeting households with an Amazon Prime scam.

Victims of that scam have received an automated call telling them a fraudster has used their personal details to sign up for an Amazon Prime subscription.

They are then instructed to press 1 to cancel the transaction. If they do this, they are then connected directly to the real scammer who poses as an Amazon customer service representative.

The scammer tells the victim the Amazon Prime subscription was purchased fraudulently and that they need remote access to the victim’s computer in order to fix a security flaw that will prevent it from happening again.

An elderly woman recently fell victim to the fraud and transferred £10,000 to the scammers.

The victim, who doesn’t have an Amazon Prime account, was led to believe that someone had cloned her bank details and set up an Amazon account in her name, which the scammers told her they’d help to cancel.

In order to ‘cancel the account’, the lady was told she’d need to first transfer a £10,000 sum under utmost security, not telling a soul, to a named bank account, which the scammer gave her a sort code and account number for.

She was even prompted to lie to the bank staff when (as expected) she was challenged about the large withdrawal. She followed these instructions and lied and the transfer went through.

Wrexham Trading Standards say you should never give personal information, such as bank details, to a cold caller and never withdraw money if you’re asked to. If someone tells you to do anything unusual, always stop and take time to consider what is being asked of you.

You can help to protect yourself by asking yourself these questions:

• “Is it normal to be asked to lie?”
• “Why am I being asked to withhold information from my family?”
• “Is this a scam?”

Please try to look out for vulnerable neighbours and family members. If you want to report something you think is suspicious, please contact either Citizens Advice Consumer Services on 03454 040506 or North Wales Police on 101.

Always talk to friends or family before taking a decision you may later regret.