Middle East Conflict and Crypto Scams

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Avtalet gör det enkelt. Avtalade försäkringar.

Hello, welcome to this Money Box Podcast, the listener who was robbed of more than£300,000 by cryptocurrency fees.

It now looks like I'm gonna lose my house and that I'll have to sell it to repay the loans. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

But is anyone trying to catch them? And a free official scheme to claim compensation for missold car finance is finally promised by the end of the month.

A short time ago. The United States military began major combat operations in Iran.

The US and Israel launch strikes from air and sea in what they say will be a multi day operation dubbed by the Pentagon Epic Fury.

In the last week, the attacks have spread to sixteen countries across the Middle East, as Iran has retaliated and Israel has extended its bombing to Lebanon. Yn ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud. Ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud. Ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud.

Hi Money Box, my name is Alyssa and I live in Lichfield. My question is will fuel and gas prices increase due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East?

Hello, my name's Kevin Knowles from Somerset. I just want to know what the thoughts are about s the prices of central heating oil. I noticed that prices had already gone up to well, somebody was quoting eighty pence per litre. Somebody else was quoting seventy pence a litre, yet last week I bought five hundred litres of central heating oil for fifty eight P bar a few decimal points.

Hello, Moneybox. My name is Biddy Fisher and I live in a rural area of Norfolk. My questions are around the supply to domestic properties of LPG. liquid petroleum gas. I wonder if you can advise why this is not subject to the energy price cap as in electricity and what I might call town gas. a'r hyn rydych chi'n gweithio'r fwyaf o'r fwyaf o'r fwyaf o'r fwyaf o'r fwyaf o'r fwyaf o'r fwyaf o'r fwyaf o'r fwyaf o'r fwyaf o'r fwyaf o'r fwyaf o'r fwyaf

Well listening to that is Ellen Fraser from the Energy Consultancy Beringa. Um Ellen Fraser that there's of course a huge amount of uncertainty at this stage about the lasting impact of this, but the price of home heating oil has increased in just the last few days. Since we spoke to Kevin, it's now not fifty eight, not seventy, not eighty. It's a hundred and thirty three pence per litre, more than doubled in a week. Why has it risen so much?

Felly mae'r hyn yn ymwneud â'r hyn yn ymwneud â'r hyn yn ymwneud â'r hyn yn ymwneud â'r hyn yn ymwneud â'r hyn yn ymwneud â'r hyn yn ymwneud â'r hyn. Part of the challenge is we just don't have any stocks in the UK. We don't hold much. So when you see um a a significant disruption on the supply side, the prices on the demand side really increase quite materially. And we've seen that happen very quickly.

And is that the same for liquid petroleum gas, LPG and Calagas, I think we call it, isn't it? That's the ma manufacturer, Biddy U that Biddy uses it.

Yes, exactly. We and we we effectively buy that on the spot market. So those again, those those prices flush through very quickly.

Mm. And Jeff emailed earlier to say that he bought five hundred litres last Monday at sixty three pence. He was very pleased, but then yesterday the supplier said it wouldn't deliver it. And he said in Wales, where he lives, they're now charging a hundred and thirty five pence a litre. What's your advice to people, l like the ones we had earlier, like Biddy and Jeff and the others? What what can they do?

It's incredibly hard to know the right answer in this scenario. If I was in that situation, I would probably underfill the tank. Um I wouldn't want to lock in the high price right now. And I think everyone across the world is hoping that this eases reasonably quickly and prices will therefore come down. So don't lock in that high price.

I'm sure we all are. Um Biddy also asks why isn't it covered by the price cap that limits the price of what she called town gas and electricity?

Rydyn ni'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud hyn.

Yes, and you know the forecaster Cornwall Insight said midweek that it now expects the typical household to be paying ten percent more in July than the April price cap that was announced last week. That would be another hundred and fifty pounds a year for typical use. Um do you reckon that's right?

Cymru mae'n cael ei gweithio cymdeithasol ac mae'n cael ei gweithio cymdeithasol ac mae'n cael ei gweithio cymdeithasol ac mae'n cael ei gweithio cymdeithasol ac mae'n cael ei gweithio cymdeithasol ac mae'n cael ei gweithio cymdeithasol ac mae'n cael ei gweithio cymdeithasol It could unfortunately be higher if things don't ease.

Yes. I mean gas in Europe, as I said, is now two thirds higher than ten days ago. Crude oil is a third higher. They were still rising when I looked yesterday. Um when will when will that affect the prices we pay for things?

It it depends very much on the supply chain. So things like petrol, for example, actually tend to take slightly longer to flush through. But things like heating oil, where ba as I said uh earlier, where we don't have a storage, you tend to see that really impact us very quickly, but certainly within the month for the majority of of energy prices, unless of course you've fixed your tariff and you're on the price cap, in which case you're protected until the end of this pricing window.

Well sta stay with us, Ellen, but also with me in the London studio is Vicky Price. She's Chief Economic Advisor at the Centre for Economics and Business Research. Um Vicky Price, oil and gas prices rise, energy costs go up, it's fairly inevitable. But rising energy costs don't stop there. Everything we buy is transported. How will this affect inflation?

Well absolutely and we've seen that happen before. I mean if you look at aviation fuel costs which have gone up significantly, freight rates, so moving anything on containers uh is also gonna be going up because of course the cost also of

No, but food, particularly, people are concerned about. Food inflation is higher than general inflation. There's been a lot of discussion about shipping through the Strait of Hormuz now, which has been stopped by Iran. And that's a shipping route for oil and gas, but also for urea which is used to make fertilizer, a third of the global trade. Rising fertilizer prices must put up food prices whether they're from the UK or from abroad.

You're absolutely right. I mean the agricultural sector has already been making noises about this, so uh you know farmers will be hit. Uh well at the end of the day of course the consumer will be hit as well. And again the question is how long does this whole thing last and and whether perhaps those prices may be c coming down at some point, you know, quite fast and and do you adjust

Let me come back to inflation because I just want to ask Ellen. Um these higher oil and gas prices, if the conflict ended very quickly, which of course everyone hopes it would, would they still persist?

Some of them would drop reasonably quickly and some of the market is based around sentiment so I think there would be a global sigh of relief and actually some of the worries. um would drop off quite quickly. Clearly supply chains need to replenish themselves. So the actual costs to get back to where they were before would take some time to flush through.

Yeah, and going back to Vicky now, there was another big political moment this week. It wasn't uh Rachel Reeves gave her spring forecast, but as you said, the figures she gave and the Office for Budget Responsibility gave, they were all calculated before the war started. So Can we rely on them or are should we just throw them away and think again?

Oh, we'll have to think again. If you look just to the inflation figures and I and I mentioned, you know, people are already moving up from what the OBR was forecasting. I mean the Bank of England has been expecting in to underperform in terms of the target of two percent. So by April the expectation was that we might be moving to maybe one point seven percent. It may not last very long, but there are reasons of calculating in that way, which is m uh twelve months

Yes. So so those those pr prospects of a of a cut of maybe half a point, three and a quarter percent, that that may have gone. And I must say the financial data providers told us some mortgage lenders had cut rates. planned rate cuts in mortgages, some have begun to creep up and it said the conflict has completely changed the outlook on what might happen to rates. Do you agree, Vic?

I do, I'm afraid. I mean what you're seeing is that the bond markets have reacted and uh yields on on uh government bonds, in other words, the the the interest rate which uh uh capital markets are prepared to lend to the government on have has been going up and mortgages are linked very much to that.

And I'm just going to ask you both in a word. Petrol price is up. Do you expect them to go further in a word, Ellen? Yes.

Unfortunately, yes.

Vicky? Yes. Vicky Price and Ellen Fraser. Thank you for giving me just one word on that. Thank you very much.

Under miljontals år har djur utvecklat sofistikerade parningsritualer. Fåglar dansar, vargar gular och oscar går in på Amazon för att förbereda sin. På Amazon hittar han levande ljus, lyxiga vingas till fint pris och en extra tandborste. デートナイトフォローハンダー

I förrän till toskens och så möter jag en kvinna på totalen, men då får hon alltså ett samtal i en sån där mobilitetstelefon. Nej men det är ju totalt livsvarligt bad. Och kan vi verkligen gå och tala samtidigt, jag tror inte det.

Lotto har gjort vanligt folk ovanligt rika sedan 1980, och nu blir miljonärerna ännu.

Now retired civil servant Sarah invested just two hundred and fifty US dollars in cryptocurrency, or so she thought. Thieves used that investment to steal a third of a million pounds off her. That's all her savings, and when they were gone, she was persuaded to borrow from friends, family, and then banks them to pay the thieves tens of thousands of pounds more on promise they'd recover the money which of course they themselves had stolen.

Initially they they drained me of my own savings very quickly within the space of like a couple of weeks. Mae'n rhaid i chi'n ymwneud â'r rhaid i chi'n ymwneud â'r rhaid i chi'n ymwneud â'r rhaid i chi'n ymwneud â'r rhaid i chi'n ymwneud â'r rhaid payment that you make in order to to release your money will be the one that does the trick and all your money will come back into to your bank account. Possibly the largest transfer I made was something like forty six thousand pounds, which

What was it like living through this? It must have been so desperate for you to do that.

your most logical thoughts of contacting the police, contacting your own banks, that they do brainwash you into believing their point of view.

What made you realise and what was that moment like?

Rydyn ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd Rwy'n credu un o'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r amser. yn ymwneud â hynny. Mae'n ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r hyn.

So three hundred and thirty seven thousand pounds stolen. What did your bank say?

Absolutely nothing, they don't see that they've got any part to play in this, any responsibility towards it they feel that th there's it I was given enough information to know whether or not this was a scam. So three hundred and thirty seven thousand pound went out of my primary account.

Or be it controlled by the scammers. Mm-hmm. What about the police? You've had three hundred and thirty seven thousand pounds stolen. How much of a police investigation has there been?

Nothing, really. I've had a courtesy phone call that I was told in no uncertain terms there's absolutely nothing that they can do, but they could refer me to victim support phone number.

What do you make of that?

Uh

I just stunned because you don't expect to actually have that sort of amount of money stolen and there'd be no comeback on it. There'll be nobody. there at all that that wants to know about it.

What would be your message to people who would say, That had never happened to me? You know, how could she be so stupid?

Don't be so sure. I always said that. I always said that it would never happen to me. They're just so manipulative. and they're just so psychologically very switched on and very good at how they get you to uh believe them.

yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r What do you make of what you've been through?

I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Mae'n unrhyw beth sy'n ei ddweud yn ei ddweud. Mae'n unrhyw beth sy'n ei ddweud. Mae'n unrhyw beth sy'n ei ddweud.

Dan, a terrible story from Sarah there, and y you've been reporting on cases of fraud for years. How does Sarah's experience compare with others?

I it was brutal, Paul. There's no other word for it. Uh these criminals, these thieves, they took everything from her. As you heard, starting little by little amounts, getting larger and larger amounts. Uh a hundred and ninety thousand pounds of her savings was stolen within just a few weeks.

extraordinary amount, but I'm sure some people listening are thinking, how does it build up from that? What what d why didn't she realise? What did they do to persuade you?

We must remember we are talking about ruthlessly efficient criminals, Paul. And as soon as they've got you in, as soon as you heard from Sarah, once she's down that rabbit hole She is so brainwashed, they play on her desperation to try to get this money bank uh money back. And again, you heard from her, when they brainwash victims, they turn them against the banks, they turn them against police and friends and family, and and they're at the mercy of these scammers.

Yes, and regulators across Europe have warned about how this is growing. Just give us a couple of figures very quickly, Dan.

Okay, so investment scams a hundred million pounds nearly was reported stolen this way in just the first half of last year. That's up fifty five percent from the year before. So huge scale and growing.

Mm. And this kind of theft from people in the UK is often carried out by criminals based abroad. What do we know about these thefts?

Thieves. We know they're serious organized criminal gangs. We know it is on an industrial scale. Um traditionally they would be based in West African countries uh or Asia. Around about two thirds of these scams are based abroad. Now moving into Southeast Asia, but it's not quite black and white about who's behind them. Uh Nick Sharp is the deputy director of the National Economic Crime Centre, which is part of the UK wide national crime agency.

Often the people doing fraud and scams, particularly in West Africa, will be entry level criminality. So they'll recruit young people from the street with limited prospects into organised crime who will start running scams and fraud from compounds. So we have seen in Ghana, for example, a raid which we worked with the Ghanaians on, where there were two hundred people in the scam compound, one hundred and eighty of them were trafficked individuals and that

Scamming people who don't even want to be doing it, but let's be really clear who's behind it serious organised criminals.

So Dan, international, industrial scale, organized crime. How can anyone stop it?

I'm sorry but the blunt truth, Paul, is it can't be stopped. And a quick couple of numbers for you in terms of the scale. One point two million reported offences last year in the UK, four point one million estimated offences of fraud. Obviously there's a cliche that law enforcement can't arrest their way out of the problem. So much is on the individual to try to prevent it. Uh here's Nick Sharp again.

Increasingly, every nation is recognising this as both a domestic and an international problem. So I'm finding, say, in West Africa, real openness to tackling the problem, which is how we're able to get local law enforcement to go and raid compounds, boiler rooms in country.

Well, some money going back to victims, but Dan, you and I have talked before on the programme about banks refunding more of the money. What happened in Sarah's case?

Uh not a penny was refunded uh for a number of reasons, Paul. I'll explain why. First of all, uh the scam in Sarah's case happened uh in spring summer twenty twenty four. That was just a few months before new Stronger protections for victims were brought in in the October of 2024. Um those uh new uh protections don't cover though international transfers, they don't cover cryptocurrency payments because banks

Yes, so sh she was warned by the bank, or at least one of the banks at one stage. People don't think it can happen to them, do they? W just briefly, how can people stop it happening?

Some key red flags for people and loved ones of people who may be victims. Criminals often try to move. conversations and these scams to private channels, things like WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal. They'll try to isolate victims, try to turn them against their friends, their family, their banks. If this is potentially happening to you or someone you know or love,

Thanks Dan and do let us know your experiences. Moneybox at bbc.co.uk. One listener has already emailed to say she lost a hundred and sixty five thousand pounds. You can WhatsApp us, 0306 783103. Do remember if you buy cryptocurrency and it is stolen, you won't get your money back. If you're suffering distress or despair need support, including urgent support, there's a list of organisations that will help at BBC.co.uk slash action live.

What we're expecting is that by the end of this month, probably the last week in March, the FCA will make its announcement that this is the the redress process that it does want to go forward with. and assuming that that does go into into action very quickly, we would expect the first customers who have already registered with their finance company should start to receive money fingers crossed by the summer and then into the second half of this year.

Stuart Masson, the car expert, and the FCA also said this week there's no need to use a claims management company or a law firm. That may cost you 30% or more of any compensation. And of course we'll bring you the details when we get them. Well, war, fraud, miss selling. If you haven't already signed up for the podcast of the show at BBC Sounds, why not do that now and never miss one? And of course, in a very fast changing world, you can also listen to the programme live and hear it all first.

What would you do if your deepest secrets were held to ransom? In 2020, every patient who had used a Finnish psychotherapy service called Vastamor had their therapy service service service. And held to ransom by a faceless.

could be some extortionist gang from Eastern Europe or it could be somebody living next door to

How vulnerable our deepest secrets can be. And intrigue. This is ransom. Listen first on BBC Sound.

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Well.

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