Daily Mail, Friday, September 6, 2019 Page
QQQ
Phone scammers
stole my £70k
life savings, says
BBC star Helen
‘All gone. And it was just a few ques-
tions over the phone.’
The former Blue Peter presenter
added: ‘I had one kid up a tree,
one wrestling the dog, another dog
throwing up the kids’ birthday
cake, then they phoned me from the
bank and said, “Oh, something has
gone on.”
‘You don’t question your bank.’
Miss Skelton has now made a pro-
gramme for ITV about the rise of tel-
ephone fraud.
The presenter, who has worked
on the BBC’s Countryfile since
2008, said: ‘The reason I am making
this programme is because it
happens every day of the week, and
to everyone.
‘We are not talking about little old
ladies who are victims and don’t
understand the internet – that’s a
massively naive assumption.
‘It’s happening to a lot of people
and they are too embarrassed to say
it’s happened.’
The cold-call phone scam typically
involves fraudsters deceiving people
into believing they are speaking to a
police officer, a member of bank staffcollect the card and arrange for a new
one. They then have the victim’s card,
name and home address.
There is no breakdown of how much
telephone fraud costs the UK, but
the annual global figure is estimated
at £24billion.
Another report found that 85billion
scam calls are believed to be made
worldwide per year.
Britons receive an average of seven
calls a month, according to the Global
Robocall Radar study. More than half a
million victims contact Action Fraud
every year.
Following the Daily Mail’s successful
Stop the Bank Scammers campaign,
banks must now refund fraud victims
who lost money – providing they took
reasonable care to protect themselves.
Ruth Evans, chairman of the Author-
ised Push Payment Scams Steering
Group, which wrote the new rules, said:
‘For the first time, any victim who is a
customer of a signatory firm will be fully
refunded, as long as they meet the
standards expected.’
[email protected]or a representative of another trusted
company or agency such as a Gov-
ernment department.
The fraudsters convince the victims
that they have been a victim of fraud
and will ask for personal and finan-
cial information in order to gain
access to their accounts.
Another scam involves the fraud-
ster – posing as a police officer or a
member of bank staff – saying that
there has been a fraudulent payment
on the victim’s card and it needs to
be replaced.
They say they will send a courier toSTOP THE
BANK
SCAMMERS
We are not talking
about little old ladies
who don’t understand
the internet – it’s
happening to a lot of
people and they are
too embarrassed to
say it’s happened
HELEN Skelton has revealed she
was conned out of £70,000 by
telephone bank scammers.
The TV and radio presenter said it was
naive to think only elderly people fell
victim to such fraud, as many others
were too embarrassed to admit it had
happened to them.
Miss Skelton, 36, who is mother to sons
Ernie and Louis with her husband, England
rugby league player Richie Myler, said she was
looking after her children when she received
a ‘dodgy’ phone call from what she believed
was her bank.
A week after answering ‘a few questions’ she
made the horrific discovery that her account
had been drained of her life savings, of which
she has recovered only a small amount.
‘I got phoned up by the bank, told some-
thing dodgy had been going on with my
account. A week later, £70,000 had gone,’ she
said on ITV’s Lorraine.By Jennifer Ruby
Senior Showbusiness CorrespondentDuped: Helen Skelton leaves the TV studios yesterdayBrace for Storm... Gerda? Bad
weather to get diverse names
YOU may struggle to pronounce some of Daily Mail Reporter
the storms blowing in over the next few
months – as the Met Office has joined up
with its Dutch counterpart to name them.
Atiyah, which is of Arabic origin, will be
the first name given to a storm this win-
ter. And the Met Office has confirmed that
other names that will be used include
Gerda, Maura, Piet and Roisin.
Fortunately, there will be some more
familiar ones too, however, including Den-
nis, Jan and Olivia.
It is the fifth year the Met Office and
Ireland’s Met Eireann have run the Name
Our Storms campaign to raise awarenessof severe weather before it hits. This year
the Royal Netherlands Meteorological
Institute also joined in.
The names are compiled from a list of
submissions by the public, taking some of
the most popular names and also select-
ing ones which reflect the diversity of the
three countries.
The full list of storm names is: Atiyah;
Brendan; Ciara; Dennis; Ellen; Francis;
Gerda; Hugh; Iris; Jan; Kitty; Liam; Maura;
Noah; Olivia; Piet; Roisin; Samir; Tara; Vince
and Willow.Cricket writer stumped after
£55,300 bar bill for ONE beer
IT’S a prize-winning beer, so you might By James Tozer
expect to pay a little extra for a pint.
But when cricket writer Peter Lalor had a
bottle of Deuchars IPA at an upmarket
Manchester hotel, he was hit for £55,000.
It was only after paying that the Austral-
ian – over here to cover the Ashes – realised
he had bought ‘the most expensive beer in
history’ with £55,300 taken from his account- including a £1,380 transaction fee.
He said later: ‘It’s a good beer. The origi-
nal version of it won a heap of awards ... but
if you are thinking that no beer is worth the
best part of 100,000 Australian dollars, then
I am inclined to agree.’ He said he asked
staff at the Malmaison Hotel if they had
anything that was not an American craft
beer or Euro lager. They suggested Heineken
... a Dutch lager.
He eventually got a bottle of Deuchars.
When he asked the barmaid about the bill
‘she covered her mouth, started to giggle’
and he had to insist on seeing it.
He said it was ‘baffling’ that his bank had
allowed the payment to go through. He has
been told a refund will take nine days.
The Deuchars IPA – made in Edinburgh –
should have cost £5.50. It is thought the bar
worker mis-typed the price. The Malmai-
son said it had apologised to Mr Lalor.
The Ashes – Back Page