Appearing on Channel 5’s Phone Scams: Don’t Get Caught Out, Mitch Ward revealed how a series of convincing text messages by fraudsters cost him a sizeable amount of money. The criminals pretended to be the retired policeman’s son, who in the pretence of the scam, claimed to be in need of medical bills being paid. Mr Ward explained; “I was at work and I got a text through. The text started off, ‘Hi Dad. This is my new number. Can you please delete the other number and use this one?’
“And I thought nothing off it. It looked like it was from my son. My son is mid-20. He lives on his own. He’s all independent himself, and everything like that.
“We do have regular contact – but again, in this modern world, we tend to do it over the phone, or even texts and WhatsApp.
“I knew that he told me that he had been to a doctors’ but he didn’t tell me what he went to a doctors’ for. “Half an hour later, there was another text that came through.”
This text read: “Dad, I’ve lost my card. Can you pay for some medical treatment that I’ve had? Try to ring me and I can talk to you about it.”
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Mitch ended up calling the number on WhatsApp, however he was met with some feedback which meant he could not hear anything.
After this, he received another text from the scammer which said: “I’m having difficulties with my phone. I can’t hear you. Can you hear me?”
Over text,…
