Fraudsters are now willing to play the long game in their latest despicable attempt to win money from vulnerable people.
In one case, a scammer had a WhatsApp conversation with an elderly woman that lasted four days posing as her daughter before persuading her to transfer £3,500 believing it was to pay for a much-needed laptop .
And now financial experts have issued fresh alerts over more than “Hello Mom” scams after she narrowly avoided having her savings robbed — she was only saved by an automated bank draft.
The victim, who asked not to be named, revealed she felt a ‘utter fool and completely violated’ after convincing her ‘daughter’ to lend £3,385.58 for a new Apple MacBook so she could access to internet banking.
Unscrupulous scammers posing as the children of their potential victims email hundreds of targets with a text or WhatsApp message claiming to have a new number because their phone has been lost or broken.
Fraudsters are now willing to play the long game in their latest despicable attempt to win money from vulnerable people with ‘Hello Mom’ scams. In one case, a scammer had a WhatsApp conversation with an elderly woman that lasted four days posing as her daughter before persuading her to transfer £3,500 to pay for a much-needed laptop
Then, over several days, the scammer will confirm the idea that they are talking to their “child” with innocent texts, even answering calls with static sounds saying their spare phone’s microphone is broken.
Cyber security expert Professor Steven Murdoch warned the British to be wary of these convincing ‘Hi mum’ cons, which are a kind of Authorized Push Payment (APP) scam.
APP scams trick someone into sending money to a fraudster posing as a real beneficiary, according to the Payment Systems Regulator.
The security engineering professor at University College London told MailOnline: ‘A common strategy is to make it urgent. Something terrible is going on and if you don’t pay it’s something worse. It puts people under pressure and makes people think.’
He said the “Hello Mom” scam works slightly differently, as “it lasts for several days and the last part signals urgency – but building trust over a long period of time is different.”
Scammers were more likely to ‘spoof’ numbers, making an incoming call look like it was a known number, but Prof Murdoch said this is becoming less common as phone companies have taken steps to prevent this.
He added: ‘All banks have automated checks but how well they work will vary and they won’t publicly reveal how they work as if people knew it would be easier to get around.
“Some of these systems are not as sophisticated as some people think – it’s not often a sophisticated machine learning algorithm.”
He said experts set simple rules, such as marking a transaction if it goes to a new account and more than a certain amount, but that if criminals knew that amount, they would charge a penny less.
Prof Murdoch gave advice to anyone concerned about scams like ‘Hi Mum’ saying: ‘Take your time doing something and be very skeptical of anyone who says you need to act urgently. If you’re not sure, slow down and get help from someone you trust or call your bank.
Cybersecurity expert Professor Steven Murdoch warned Britons to be weary of ‘hi mum’ scams, a form of Authorized Push Payment (APP) fraud
Fortunately, Barclays blocked the victim’s account, saving money from the fraudster
“If the banks give advice that turns out badly, they’ll pay you back.”
He added that it was difficult to give “universal advice” as the nature of scams is constantly changing, but said “it would have been a good idea to find a way to talk to this person.” but that criminals can use voice deepfakes to impersonate humans. .
The victim told MailOnline that she received a text message from an unknown number that read, “Hi Mom, I’m an idiot, I dropped my phone and the screen is broken so I’m using my old phone, can you message me on this number so I know you received it!’
The woman replied: ‘Hello – yes I have it’
Her “child” replied, “Great – I’ll just transfer all the data from my broken phone to this one.”
She didn’t get any texts the next day, but a day later they got a text asking, “Hey, are you busy?”
The victim replied, “I just got back from a nice lunch with Gill (a friend) – I’m available now.”
She then tried to call her ‘daughter’ but only heard crackling noises on the other end of the line.
The scammer texted, “Hi, did you just try to call me? My old phone’s microphone has water damage, so I can’t make calls with it at the moment.
“I’m really having trouble paying bills because my banking app doesn’t recognize this phone.”
“Oh no, how annoying,” the woman replied.
A day later, the scammer jumped up and asked for a favor, texting, “I have a problem, can you help me?”
“Of course I do when I can,” she replied.
“I still can’t connect to my banking app and I have a bill to pay. It’s for £3,385.58. I know it’s a lot, but I’ll pay you back tomorrow as soon as the banks are open.’
The woman asked, “What is it for?”
Her ‘daughter’ replied, ‘It’s for a Macbook I bought and I have to pay so I can use it to get my phone sorted. Can you pay for it for me?’
The mother replied, “Okay, I’ll try.”
The scammer responded by sending a name, sort code and account number for payment.’
She entered the details and tried to transfer the money through Barclay’s online banking, but the payment fell through due to security checks being requested.
The victim told her daughter, “Oh no, it’s asking for security checks, it hasn’t come through yet.”
But the scammer reassured their “mom”: “It will probably take a while, because you haven’t deposited into this account before.”
But then Barclays blocked the victim’s account and prevented any payment, and she texted her “daughter”: “Whatever – Barclays has blocked my accounts, I’ll call them!”
The victim said how the slow communication “put me in a false sense of security,” even after her daughter warned her about the “hello mom” scam.
She told MailOnline: ‘I knew all about the hello mommy scam – my daughter warned me and I read the stories. But this is different, do not ask for money at first.
“I was busy, and it just gave me a false sense of security when they didn’t ask for money up front and didn’t even send that many texts. When they finally asked I was just worried and wanted to help asap.
“I feel like a complete fool and utterly violated. It’s just horrible that people do this.
“I am so thankful to the Barclays fraud team for spotting this and stopping it so quickly.”
Barclays has been approached for comment.
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