A Dundee-born woman has spoken of her fright after narrowly avoiding falling victim to a telephone scam.
Leslie Rennie was awoken just after midnight by a telephone call from someone purporting to be a policeman.
The caller told her that her cards had been copied by a scammer now in custody, but that she should immediately hang up the phone and call the bank to cancel her cards.
However, Ms Rennie’s suspicions were aroused when, after dialling the bank with a number on the back of her card, an operator immediately answered and asked for her details.
“I realised there was something suspicious about getting straight through to an operator so I hung up again and redialled.
“When someone answered straight away again I just said ‘Sorry if this sounds stupid, but is this really the bank?’”
The scammer, pretending to be a policeman, had actually never hung up his phone, meaning that the call never went dead and Ms Rennie was in fact still speaking to the same person.
“Of course, I just picked up the phone straight away and dialled the number on the back of my card,” said Ms Rennie, who grew up in Dundee but lives in London.
Luckily, Ms Rennie realised in time that the caller was a fake and avoided giving over any compromising details. She has now reported the scam to the Metropolitan Police.
“It is quite a clever thing for them to do and they can get away with it. I was speaking to the police and they said it was quite a common scam, particularly affecting older people.”
“If you’re woken in the middle of the night and flustered, it’s easy to not think as much as you would normally. I dialled an official number it really frightened me how close I came.”