Roseland Online has been tipped off about a phone scam involving the police themselves. This report comes from the criminal investigation team.
“A new scam identified by The Police National Technology Teams:
I received a telephone call on my landline at about 12:45 last night purporting to be from the Metropolitan Police who stated my name and address (which they asked me to confirm) and asked if I had an HSBC debit card. I confirmed I did.
They stated that they had arrested a man with a number of cloned cards including mine and without asking any details regarding the card asked that I phone the HSBC fraud team at the number on the back of the card, report the fraud and give his details (name, rank and badge number which he provided). I asked his telephone number and he told me to call the general 101 police number and they could route the call through.
Despite the hour, the call felt a little uncomfortable and I chose to check on-line first to see if anything had obviously disappeared from my account. Nothing was showing so after pondering, I thought what was to be lost by calling HSBC. I picked up my handset, got a dialling tone and started to dial the HSBC number. I’m not sure what it was but I had the impression the line wasn’t clear so I stopped the call, started again, but got the same impression.
I therefore cancelled the call and called HSBC instead from a mobile. HSBC said the account showed no signs of being tampered with but that they would monitor it. HSBC asked for no more than sort code; account number; and a couple of basic security questions e.g. location of branch. I then called the police on the 101 number and they confirmed they had received a number of such calls and that it was a scam.
I mentioned my experience with the landline and the feeling that the line wasn’t clear and was told that was the scam – the scammers do not hang up and when you use the phone again, they are somehow able to give the impression you have a dialling tone. When you call the legitimate number on your card, the scammers ‘answer’ the call posing as your bank. They then ask you details of your card and apparently ask you to key in your PIN number and hey presto, all is lost. These things seem desperately obvious in the cold light of day but in the middle of the night and with enough detail to be plausible, it would not be too difficult to be sucked in so just a word to the wise.”
Thanks for posting this information. I haven’t had a call like it but I have read several cases posted at Callercenter.com about text messages being sent to random phone numbers claiming that the recipient’s bank account has been suspended due to suspicious activities. But it’s a big bluff and anybody who receives such a call should hang up and report it.