Telephone and Courier Scam

In the last few days several police services have issued warnings about the currently popular ‘telephone and courier scam’, which tends to target elderly people.

The offence begins as a telephone call from a fraudster pretending to be a police officer, sometimes saying they’re from a London police station.  They tell the potential victim that they’re investigating a fraud whereby their credit or bank card has been used and they need it as evidence.  They then tell the caller that they’ve arranged for a courier to visit them to collect the card and that they will inform the bank etc.  A person then purporting to be a courier acting on behalf of the police then calls at the address and takes the card.

As simple as this scam might seem the fraudsters have had some success.

Friend of our website, Graham Houghton, recently posted an article onto our Facebook page about this very problem.

In this article it seems that there were six incidents between the 22nd and 25th July within the St John’s area of Worcester, with other incidents within the West Mercia and Warwickshire area.

In one incident a call was received by a man in his 70s from a male claiming to be From Holborn Police Station, stating that two males were in custody regarding the use of his bank card. The potential victim called his bank and confirmed no fraudulent transactions had taken place.  In a second incident a call was received by a man also in his 70s from a person purporting to be from ‘London Police’ advising that their card details had been used and that they would send someone to collect the card. Within 30 minutes two offenders arrived at his address and took his card.

Fortunately in most cases no cards are handed over, but the police want to warn everyone that neither the police nor the banks phone you up asking for bank account details and will certainly never ask you what your PIN is!

If you receive such a call and a courier comes to your door DO NOT allow them entry.  You should call 999 with as much detail as possible about the courier’s description and the vehicle and the registration number.

As an aside...

The telephone is often used as a tool to attempt to steal money from people or sell them something they don’t need.  You can reduce many of the nuisance type calls by following the advice on this page of this website.

If you would like to stop nearly all nuisance calls you might want to purchase a Call Blocker:  http://thecrimepreventionwebsite.com/directory/52/telephone-call-blocking-devices-and-services/