This summer I have been able to read all kinds of scams on the Internet. Of course, there are always the classic ones where they offer utopian jobs, download files from the Internet that have malware, and even the typical extortion scams where they say that they have recorded you watching adult videos and they ask you for money so that they do not send your video to others. Nothing new, and everything at the level of The Nigerian Prince Scam.
However, of all the news I have read this summer on the Internet, there have been three that have particularly caught my attention. And not because of their objective, since that is always the same (to deceive in order to get money), but because of the techniques that the scammers have used, which are worthy of a Netflix movie.
The 30,000 euro scam
The first of the scams, and one of the ones that has worried me the most, is that of a lady who, victim of a very well-crafted scam, paid 30,000 euros to scammersThey pretended to be her son, about whom they knew a lot of information, and began to ask for money. A mother will do anything for her son, and often does so without asking herself, is it really him?
Well, I’m going to tell you how my mother-in-law was scammed out of more than €30,000 with the help of a negligent Caixa Popular manager. You can already imagine how this starts, with a WhatsApp from someone pretending to be her son. I’ll tell you step by step everything that happened: https://t.co/b0CIWWm47w
August 23, 2024 • 18:27
The scammers convinced the woman to go to the bank so that a manager could make an instant transfer to an account number. The reason for this is simple: because these cannot be cancelled, while normal ones can be cancelled within the first few hours. When they saw that she had made the transfer, they asked for another one with excuses to a different account number, and with more money. The manager, again, made the transfer again without informing the lady of the irregularities that existed (for example, that each account was in a different name and they were from different banks). And so she continued two or three more times until she lost all of her life savings.
Fortunately, and after much fuss, the bank has accepted responsibility for its negligence and has returned the money to the family on condition that, as the State Security Forces and Corps recover the money, they return it to the bank. For the moment, they have managed to recover 10,000 of the 30,000 euros defrauded.
The mobile phone you haven’t ordered from Vodafone
Do you want to buy a mobile phone from a group of scammers? Well, this is what almost happened to this person.
Mind-blowing and worrying FRAUD on behalf of @vodafone_es sending me a terminal that I did not order, and then immediately suffering threats and coercion on my personal phone to return it or pay a fortune (about €35 x 36 months). THREAD https://t.co/rRKqukkmPi
August 28, 2024 • 11:33
This person received a cell phone at home that he had not ordered. And this cell phone was financed to pay for it in installments and with an associated permanence. He called by phone, explained the situation, and after checking that he did not appear in the verification recording, they allowed him to return it without any problem. But the person started receiving suspicious calls from “Vodafone” in which they apologized and assured her that they would send a messenger to her home within an hour. It was all too fast. Better to be suspicious.
After not handing the phone over to the courier, he receives further calls from Vodafone threatening him. They even send a copy of the contract by mail, a contract with the person’s original details. If he hands the phone over to the courier, who was probably the scammer, he can forget about the phone and will have to pay for it.
The most worrying thing about this is that the scammers have had access to all the customer data, which means either that they have access to the databases, or that there is an internal employee who is collaborating with the hackers. Both options are equally bad.
The Booking Scam
In summer, many people use Booking to book hotels or apartments. And of course, hackers know this very well. This summer, there have been a large number of scams directly related to this platform.
Many users have received SMS and emails with fake links pretending to be from this platform. By clicking on them, users are entering a fake website designed exclusively to steal people’s data and money. But, in addition, they have also received calls and messages urging them to confirm the hotel within 12 hours and that they are missing some data to do so. If they believe this, they will be asked for our personal information and bank details, so in the end we will end up losing our money.