Thursday 27 October 2011

A Particularly Nasty Scam

A friend was telling me recently of yet another scheme devised by the unscrupulous to get money out of vulnerable people. It seems that these characters are taking note of small high street shops that happen to be playing music on the radio, and then sending official looking letters to the shopkeeper saying that they are in breech of the law, that they are being fined and that they should post a cheque to such and such an address. My friend had this related to her by the owner of a shop she used regularly, and he was clearly frightened and uncertain what he should do. Friend checked with her son, who is a solicitor, and he immediately sussed out what was going on. He took a copy of the letter and is acting on it, much to the relief of the unfortunate shopkeeper.

It's difficult to understand the mind set of people who deliberately target vulnerable, frail or isolated people and think them fair game.

Like many of you, I myself get emails from people who offer to relieve me of my money on one pretext or another. Most recently from an "organisation" purporting to be HM Revenue and Customs saying I was entitled to a tax rebate and would I kindly supply bank details. I didn't, of course, and deleted the email. But how many people <I>do</I> fall for these things?

1 comment:

  1. Have you seen this site? http://www.actionfraud.org.uk/

    There are tips to avoid fraud as well as information about how to report problems - including an easy waty to pass email scams on for action.

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