Hi, this is Kia. Money scams seem like a part of everyday life now and something we must be constantly on the lookout for. Scammers are getting smarter and have plenty of clever ways to con people out of their cash. And it's young people that are most likely to be scammed. Welcome to another episode of a Little Bit Richer, brought to you by my friends at Legal &; General. Here to keep us on High Alert is Head of
Fraud Risk Management at Santander Chris Ainsley. So Chris, aren't scams something that happened more to older people?
Scammers don't discriminate. Scams can happen to anyone of any age. And what we find is that lots of people think that the scam will never happen to them. They think they're immune to it, it's not going to happen to them. Typically, we'll see younger people contacting us in relation to three main types of scams. The first is where they've seen something on social media, on a marketplace and
have made a purchase and that's never turned up. They're often luxury goods, electronics, shoes, jewelry. Sometimes it's pets and even up to the value of something like a car. But, there are also other types of scams which aren't just about you losing your money. They can involve you
becoming part of a crime. So, what we call money mules, that's where someone ends up essentially getting the money for their criminals and giving it to them into their own bank account. And that's really common. We find people being recruited on social media. There's hashtags that they'll follow and get- rich- quick type schemes. But also, what we call impersonation scams
are a big problem for younger people. And that's basically the kind of scam where you might see you've got a fake text message and you put your details into it. And then someone will call you and pretend to be from maybe a bank, maybe the police, and trick you
into moving your money somewhere you wouldn't usually. And younger people who are more engaged with technology or on social media are probably more likely to be victims of those kinds of frauds than older people.
I completely agree. I've been getting a lot of scam text messages and emails and I know that it's a big thing. Like you mentioned, social media is where I've seen the vast majority. But, I want to touch on one that you mentioned is money mules. Now, I am, I guess I'm classed as Gen Z, and I'm in
that audience. And I've seen a lot of people, like you said, this get- rich- quick thing, make quick money, just take money into your bank account and you can have a cut. But, could you give us an example of what a money mule looks like?
Yeah. Sure. If we focus on the get- rich- quick type of thing first, I think one of those things that people might be often looking for is a side hustle. Or something where they're going to make a little bit more extra money to pay for those extra things that ... Their bills are costing more, et cetera, et cetera. And if you're on online, there's two kind of things you
might end up getting involved with. The first might be some kind of investment scam, where basically you end up giving someone your money thinking you're going to get a bigger return and you get nothing. That often involves things like high- return crypto scams, things like that. And I see those all over social media. The other one is whether criminals use you and
your bank account. And that is really a problem. So, they might have posted lots of images of loads of cash or whatever else. But, essentially what they're trying to do is use you to hide their crime. So, instead of getting money paid into the organized criminal's bank accounts, which they don't have anyway, they'll use a lot of people to receive smaller amounts of money and you might
be able to give them the cash. You might be asked to buy things and give it to them. You might be asked to even give them access to your bank account, give them your card or give your online banking details. And what you'll find is you may think you are working for them, you may think you've got a job or you may think you're going to get a cut of whatever's happening. What you end up doing is,
essentially, committing a criminal offense. And being a money mule is essentially a money laundering offense, which if you look at it, it's up to 14 years in prison.
Wow!
And that is irrespective of the value of what ends up happening. So, every fraud we see, every scam that involves moving money from one bank account to another has to have one of those money mules. And therefore the criminals are always looking for new ones.
Mm- hmm. It's the criminal offense part. I think that's what a lot of people don't realize or don't maybe take as seriously. For example, when I was at university, I had a few friends and everyone's strapped for cash. When you're in university, you don't have much money. But, they were approached by some guys that we knew to, like you
said, use your bank account. If you want to transfer some money over and you send it back to us and you keep a cut. And I remember we had this conversation and I told everyone, " I don't think it's a good idea. I know we're all strapped for cash, but I don't think it's a good idea." They went ahead with it and it turns out that not only did they take in the money, but the
guys who they gave access to the account to ... The girl? Her parents had been saving for her and they stole all her savings out of her account, which was just ... It was terrible.
Yeah. And I think that the problem you've got there is the minimum that's going to happen is you're going to lose access to your bank account. And actually, in reality, you may lose access to any kind of bank account or financial service for maybe as long as six years, if you end up being reported as a mule. And the most that
can happen really is some kind of criminal offense. But, you'll also potentially get involved with some horrible serious organized criminals, who'll be doing other things behind that. And it might be as simple as you think you're giving away the £1, 000 that you receive, but where's that money going? What's
it involved with? Once it's entering their criminal hands, it's probably funding drugs, guns, knives, whatever else is going on, up to serious levels of criminality, because it's then become essentially the proceeds of a crime.
Yes. Absolutely. I'm glad that we're raising awareness of this. But, let's move on to something you touched on a little bit earlier and it's buying things online. We see all the shiny things on social media, it looks great. And like you said, you might be wanting to buy trainers, a new car. And sometimes you see things and you're like, " This is a really good price. I'm going to buy
this because it's cheaper than what I've seen elsewhere." What are some of the warning signs that we should be aware of when we're shopping and buying things online?
I think in general, a lot of people, if they're looking for something online, if they know what they're going to buy and it's something regular, they might go to an online site, Amazon, wherever. And that's something they can get straight away. If they want something that's maybe a bit more expensive, the second- hand option is so much more
obvious than ever was before. You can go to social media marketplaces and you can have a look and you can find a bargain. The problem with that is the criminals know that as well. And in reality, those marketplaces, especially the Facebook marketplace, are for local purchases, right? They're absolutely brilliant and I've bought things off there and I've gone and picked them up and you can get some
brilliant stuff. The problem is the criminals know that, and what they will do is, they might take over someone's profile so it looks like a genuine person. They'll then post a lot of things on there for sale that people really want. That might be things that are lower price than everything else. So, if you search high to low or whatever else you do when you're looking for these things
online. And what they'll ask you to do is pay by a bank transfer. So, if you think when you're shopping on Amazon or wherever else you're putting your card details in, you've got the protection of, and you can raise that with your bank. If you end up making a payment that you're essentially giving them as if you're giving cash, but you do it from your bank, you've got no idea who you're
paying. You've got no real idea if you're ever going to receive those goods. You're not dealing with a company or dealing with another person. And also you can't really check reviews of a person selling you something on a marketplace. When we've done research, and we did some very specific research ourselves into cars that were posted on Facebook, so we're not talking £ 100 for a phone, we're talking-
A lot of money.
... thousands of pounds for cars. And in just 35 minutes, my team found 4, 000 fake car adverts.
4, 000?
Yeah,. 4,000. And what we did essentially was, we almost looked for every single car that you would search for, Volkswagen Golf, Mini Cooper. All those cars, put them in. We looked for the cheapest ones and then we looked at the details. And often the details of the car didn't match. They said they were electric when they weren't. They're all massively under priced. If you looked at another site, where
you'd buy cars. Often thousands of pounds under priced, so they're always the cheapest. And then, when we were interacting with the poster of the car, what we found is they
often had 10 or 12 cars posted, some of them had hundreds. All of them had a straightforward, they came straight back to you on the marketplace giving you an email address to write to. And almost every single one of them then told you that car was in storage, it was being
auctioned. If you agreed to pay that price now and you sent it to them via bank transfer, often to an account in a business name that was unrelated in any way to the actual seller, you could get the car delivered to you and you had a 10- day (inaudible) . So, there was fake guarantee documents. But, there was 4, 000 of those that we found and almost every car you
could imagine. And they were all posted in the local area as well.
That's so mind- blowing. 4, 000 just shows you how many fake ads are out there. And something is expensive as a car, but which your first car you're upgrading, that is a lot of money to put down on anything.
And on those car scams, when we looked at our own customers that reported to us, about 20% of all those customers that had reported a car scam of some description like that to us were under the age of 25. 20%. So, that's because there was a £ 3, 000 price for a car that might be 8, 000, 9,000, 10,000. So, they thought they were
getting a really good price. And in reality the advice that we would give them is, if you haven't sat in the car, test driven it, don't pay out any money.
Absolutely. I I don't have an example as big as that, but a few months ago I was looking to buy a new laptop. I was buying a gaming laptop. And I'd gone online and I'd found one. I said, " Okay. That's the one I want to get," and I was still just double checking. And then my dad said, " Check and see how many they're selling," and when we went to see how many (inaudible) was selling, there was tons,
so many. And they're all very similar descriptions. And then, that's when we realized actually this doesn't feel like a genuine seller, so we had to go somewhere else. But, like I said, it's all about the due diligence, because I wouldn't have bought that one straight away. But, if I hadn't, I'd just seen it and bought it, I could have fallen victim to that as well.
Yeah. And I think one of the things is, it's not just when you're buying things off those sites as well. If you're selling stuff ... And I've posted ridiculous things like a phone or some old baby equipment or whatever else. You will end up being attacked by the scammers on that as well. So, they'll be asking, " Can you send it to me? Can you pay for this insurance product, because I'm going to get someone to come and
collect it." So, it's not just when you are buying things off there, you've got to be careful. If you're also selling things, you might end up losing money and also not selling the thing in the first place, because again, it's a real common scam that we're seeing, where customers have been asked to buy things or pay for extra shipping, or whatever, to send to someone, even for a low- value item.
Gosh, there's a lot to be aware of. But, let me just circle back to something you touched on earlier, and that's impersonation scams. So, what should we be on the lookout for if we receive calls or someone gets in touch with us pretending to be someone that they're actually not?
Yeah. So, I think on impersonation scam, and if we focus in on what the fraudsters are really trying to do when they're pretending to be a bank, for example. So, we see impersonation scams pretending to be mobile phone
companies, the police, the HMRC. But, if we look at the ones that affect the banks, which is probably the most common ones, because they want to get into your bank account, they are usually someone calling you and saying that your account is somehow compromised. Your account's been defrauded, someone's trying to get in. They might have sent you
a fake text message. And what I try to explain to people is usually that's come off the back of you unwittingly having given away your information to them in
some way. So, what we've found is ... This is through work we've done with the police and our own research, is that most of those type of scams where someone's calling you pretending to be from your bank actually relate back to another scam that people probably are very much aware of, which is you getting these fake text messages saying they're from delivery companies. And I've had like six-
Same.
... in the last couple of weeks. They're obviously at it again, these criminals. And most of those ask you for some very simple information and they'll literally just ask you, " Your parcel hasn't been delivered, put in your postcard and your name. We'll check it." And they'll do a fake screen. Sometimes they might then ask you for your card
number just to pay for something. And from that information they know enough about you to give you a call. So, if you put in your card number, the first few numbers of that card will tell you who you bank with. Won't even need to ask your bank account number or your bank name. They can tell that from that. They've got your name, your address, your postcode, maybe your date
of birth, whatever else you've given them. And then they'll call you. So, they don't do anything else. All they need is that information to then call you and pretend to be your bank or someone else. And they might even say, " Oh, have you received any fake text messages?" Or, " Have you done this as part of that scam?" And then what will happen is they will do whatever they can to get your money out of you. And often
that takes the form of them saying, " Right. We need you to secure your account. Move money out of it. Make a payment. Change your limit. Do this. Give me your card number," whatever else. And it'll depend on who you bank with and how many accounts you've got and how much money they think you've got. But, in reality, if someone ever phones you, saying they're from your bank,
your bank won't ask you to move any money. Your bank won't ask you to log onto your online banking and check. Your bank certainly won't ask you what your bank balance is, because they know. They won't be working with other banks. They won't be working directly with the police or whatever other story is being spun. And we've set up a specific phone line for customers to know
they can call their bank just really simply. So, if you just dial 159 from your phone and you choose which of your banks is, it'll put you straight through. So, if you get one of those phone calls, you can literally put the phone down on whoever it is. That's always great, because the bank won't mind if it's real. They'll think you're doing the right thing. And literally you can dial 159 and choose your bank and go
through to directly and say, " Have you called me? Is there a problem? Have you sent me a text message?" So, that's how that scan works. And the thing is, it doesn't work every time, but they're doing it thousands of times. They're sending out thousands of those text messages. Everybody I've ever met has had one of those delivery scams-
Yes.
... in the same way as everyone I've ever met has had one of those, " Hi, Mum," " Hi, Dad," WhatsApp messages or whatever else. And same idea. Pretend to be someone else, ask you to make a payment. And if you are moving money from your account, you really need to be sure no one's ever going to ask you to move money. No one's ever going to ask you for
that kind of payment. So, that's the simple advice really on that one.
Absolutely. So, it's really important for us to be vigilant. So, off the back of that now, how can our listeners be careful and ensure that they don't risk losing any money? Because we've heard a lot of these scams and some of them are very sophisticated as you said, and you can't always spot it. But, how can our listeners make sure that they're being very careful and not risking anything?
If you're talking about buying something, it's always, if it's too good to be true, it might well be. So, we've seen lots of different types of scams on those social media marketplaces. If you're thinking, " That looks really good," if you're buying off that kind of place, make sure it's for local pickup. So, if it's in your local area, go and have a look at it and make sure
it's what you want. And you will still find the bargains. We're not saying you can ignore the bargains-
We are not saying all the bargains are fake.
In no way, and I've done it. So, it's not that they don't exist. What I would say is on the other types of frauds that you see, especially those impersonation scams, they'll try and rush you. They'll try and make you concerned that there's something going wrong, that your bank
account's being compromised. And let's be honest, if your bank account has been compromised in some way and your bank needs to get hold of you, they can message you. You'll see it in your mobile app, if you've got that. You'll see it on your online banking. They'll literally be able to deal with everything for you and they won't rush you. They won't ask you to make payments or
any of that kind of stuff. And nor will anyone else. The police aren't going to phone you and do that, Amazon or whoever else the fraudsters like to impersonate aren't going to do that sort of thing. And I think one of the things about buying things, or making any payments is, if you're making a payment from your bank account, you should know what it's for. If you feel that someone's asking you to do that and you
don't know why you'd be doing, it's not right. So, everything that goes in and out your account, you should know 100% what it is. And if you don't, you query it and you query it with your bank, not the person who just phoned you. But, taking a short break and thinking before you make any payment is always what you do. I know people are feeling, especially when
they're being manipulated by the criminal, that's a problem. You need to take a step back and think, " Is this what's really happening?" Scammers are everywhere. Always take a think before you respond to anything.
Absolutely. So could you give us three top tips for our listeners who maybe feel like they may have been scammed already?
Yeah. So, I think the first one is you're not going to be alone. So, if you want to have a chat with someone else, close family friend, brother, sister, whoever, just to say, " This has happened to me or this is going on, what do you think?" Always the first thing to do, take advice. Speak to someone else, share your problem. And then, essentially, if there is a problem and it involves your bank or some money, phone
them straight away and explain what's happened. And actually when you are going to talk to them, make sure you tell them absolutely everything as to what's happened. Don't be worried about not telling them that you did something or you think what you've done is going to cause a problem in the future. If you tell them absolutely everything that's happened, it'll be managed. That means that you can
limit whatever ... They'll give you material, they'll tell you what's happened, they'll explain what's gone on. Because most people that have ended up in a situation where a criminal's manipulating them, or whatever the word we want to use is, they don't really understand what's going on. They're being pushed through on a journey and engineered by the fraudster. If you break that chain, speak to your bank and they'll tell you
what's going on. So, that's probably the best three bits of advice.
Amazing. Thank you so much, Chris. I like the fact that you ended on just being transparent. I think sometimes if you have gone through that and you have done something, you can feel silly-
(inaudible) And that's for those. Any of those fraud types, or any (inaudible) impersonator scam or the purchase or especially in the money mule situation, if people are clearer about telling you what's gone on, it can be sorted much quicker.
Absolutely. Chris, thank you so much for joining us.
No problem at all.
This episode has been full of knowledge and I think hopefully our listeners have learned a lot and are now going to be on the lookout for any scams that may be coming their way.
Fantastic.
Next time we are diving into workplace pensions and how you can get more out of yours. We'd love it if you could spread the word about our podcast. Tell a mate, share with your family and help them get a little bit richer too. You can rate us, review us and subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. Keep up with the show on Legal &; General's, Instagram and TikTok
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