Manawatū retiree educating others after falling for sophisticated phone scam

Saturday, 31 March 2018

Margaret Taylor is touring Manawatū rest-homes sharing how she was scammed and almost caught out. (First published 01/04/18)

A 78-year-old retiree who nearly lost her life savings to a sophisticated phone hoax is touring rest homes to warn others of the dangers of giving personal details over the telephone.

The growing numbers of elderly people being deliberately targeted by international scammers has led to phone companies join forces to fight the scourge.

Palmerston North woman Margaret Taylor's troubles began when she was woken up on Tuesday morning by a call from a man who claimed to work for internet service provider Slingshot. He said her account had been hacked and used to download illegal pornography, and he needed immediate access to her computer to stop it.

'Brian' knew her name, her address, claimed to be from the provider and even had her internet account number.

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Margaret Taylor has started speaking at rest homes in an effort to educate others about the danger of scams.

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'That's what is so scary. At no time did I feel this was a hoax. It sounded so real,' she said.

The scammer managed to steal $5,000 from Taylor's bank accounts and credit card before she caught on.

Taylor's scammer kept her on the hook for hours, using a key-logger and his remote access to snatch all her passwords and account details that he said needed to be changed to protect them from the fictitious Wellington hacker.

The growing number of phone scammers have led telcos to work together to trace and block them.

Taylor said it only stopped when her flatmate Leanne Warr came home early in the afternoon and said, 'Shut it down now, it's a scam'

Warr, an experienced computer coder who had worked with computers for 30 years, recognised what was happening the second she saw Taylor's screen. She knew they had to act fast to stop the retiree from losing everything, she said.

Warr said her friend didn't believe her at first.

'Brian' seemed too nice, competent and concerned - he'd spent the past three hours intermixing pleasant conversation, about Taylor's knitting and her day, with dire warnings about the urgent need to foil the false hack.

'That's the psychology they use to make it work.

Taylor, had no idea she was being scammed out of $5000. The 'Slingshot' rep who called her knew all the right details - including her internet account number, name and address.

'They set the alarm bells ringing in your head, so you don't think about it and you just do what they ask.'

Warr convinced her to shut down the computer, and cut 'Brian' off - at least until they checked her bank balance, she said.

'When she checked her account, she just went white with shock.'

Taylor had been cleaned out. All $3000 of her savings were gone and her credit card had been maxed out with a $2000 cash advance.

She had nothing left except a couple of hundred dollars in her day to day account from her latest superannuation payment.

'All I could think was, how am I ever going to pay [the credit card company] with only my super,' Taylor said.

The pair quickly got in touch with her bank, ISP and the police to find out what could be done - all the while 'Brian' kept calling, in an attempt to convince them he was legit, Taylor said.

Taylor said her bank could make her no promises, despite how quickly the theft had been discovered.

'The bank told me 80 per cent of the time, the money never comes back. You have to get on to it immediately to even have a chance.'

She was faced with having to pay back the credit card at $70 a month, with a 40 per cent per year interest rate - she was worried she wouldn't be able to afford to eat properly, that the stress would ruin her health, she said.

'I thought I'd end up losing my brain. Three days later I checked my account, pretty much for fun because I didn't think it was ever coming back, and there it all was.

'The bank got it back, I was so fortunate.'

Taylor said she never wanted anyone else to go through that, or worse, lose everything to a scam.

So the retiree has started telling her story at rest homes and social clubs, to warn seniors of the tell-tale signs and what they can do if they get caught out.

Taylor has even reached out to Grey Power for help spreading her warning, she said.

Phone scams have been a growing problem in New Zealand, with some people losing tens of thousands of dollars - earlier this year Spark customers were subjected to a massive phishing scam, with up to 10,000 Kiwis targeted.

This month the Telecommunications Forum is set to launch an agreement where the big telecommunications companies work together to identify, trace and block scam numbers.

In another case this week, a 'good-natured' 72-year-old North Shore resident was also scammed after he received a call from the United States.

The scammers claimed to be working for Microsoft and alleged they wanted to help the man recover $10,000 that was stolen out of his account.

They managed to get the man to log into his bank account on his laptop and handover his banking details. They also convinced him to send them $2000 via Western Union.

However, an employee at the man's local superette threw a spanner in the scammers' works after he refused to sell a $1000 Itunes voucher to the elderly man.

The man's daughter said the employee informed the man that he was being scammed and called the police.

But the scammers didn't give up that easily. They phoned the man the very next day claiming to be from the 'Wellington fraud police' and again offered to help him to recover his stolen money.

Now wise to their scam, the man luckily didn't fall for their tricks again. He has since changed his bank login details, reinstalled his laptop's operating system