A woman is warning others after she was nearly scammed out of her entire credit card balance by someone she thought was a relative.
Valerie Schroeder’s son returned to New Zealand last year after living in the UK but work recently called him back to the UK for a three-week period.
Valerie thought nothing of it when she got a text message from a UK number saying, ‘Hi mum, here’s my new number’.
She began to converse with who she thought was her son, asking how the trip was going and when his gig was playing.
The responses were nothing untoward, they even included ‘xx’ at the end of them, mirroring her replies.
After some back-and-forwarding, Valerie told her son she would prefer to video call him but was met with ‘I’ll give you a call later, I’m just trying to sort out a problem’.
Worried for her son, she asked if there was anything she could help with.
The response was that he had some invoices that needed paying today but with his new number he couldn’t get his mobile banking to work.
Valerie, eager to help in anyway possible, asked what she could do to assist.
The suggestion was made that the invoices could be sent to her to pay with the promise to ‘pay you back tomorrow xx’.
Then the suggestion was made that she could just send him a photo of the credit card and he could save her the hassle and pay them himself. So that’s what she did.
Being an international payment of a large sum, she had to call the bank to authorise the payment, thankfully in the meantime she thought she better contact other family members to confirm her son had in fact got a new number.
Before she got through to the bank, her daughter-in-law informed her that no, he did not have a new number, so instead of authorising the payment, she cancelled her card and blocked the number, saving her almost $5000.
Age Concern Nelson Tasman manager Caroline Budge says scams are nothing new, but this particular wave pulls at an emotional response.
"Traditionally they’ve been emails from IRD, that kind of thing, but this latest wave is somebody pretending to be a family member. It’s very believable and it makes people respond from an emotional point of view, they’re concerned and they want to help.”
Caroline says anyone finding themselves in this position should take a moment to think and confirm their identity.
“Email them, speak to a family member, try another form of contact to confirm it’s them. Follow your instinct, if you’re starting to have niggles, please listen to that. If it seems out of character for this person to ask for money, stop and think.”
