LYING awake night after night, Kristina Belkaite can’t stop thinking about whether she’ll be able to keep her business afloat after scammers stole over £24,700.
The 28-year-old runs a street food stall with business partner Fabien Battut and their hard-earned cash was swiped by fraudsters in June.
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They received a phone call from someone claiming to be from their business bank, Tide.
The scammer said that hackers had compromised their account and a new one needed to be opened to keep their cash safe.
But little did they know the caller on the other end of the phone was a fraudster, out to steal their cash.
At first the pair were suspicious about the phone call out of the blue.
But the caller had personal information such as transaction details and sounded professional, which persuaded Kristina and Fabien it was real.
To move their cash to a new “safe” account, the duo were sent an email with a QR code in it.
Once scanned, this would enable the caller to access their account.
Usually when logging into a Tide account on your computer, a QR code pops up on the login page – you scan this through your app and it then lets you access your account on your laptop.
The scammer set up a bank transfer to move £24,700 to the so-called “safe” account.
They then said that a new…
