A woman has shared her story of losing her life savings to a WhatsApp scammer to raise awareness of methods used by fraudsters.
Angela Briscoe appeared on ITV’s This Morning to explain that she received messages on WhatsApp from someone who pretended to be her son, who was travelling in Mexico at the time. Mrs Briscoe told hosts Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby that the scam ended up costing her a staggering £10,000.
The fraudster first got in touch with the message: “Hi mum, please change my mobile number to this one”. Mistakenly believing that it was from her son, Mrs Briscoe quickly replied.
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Messaging back to confirm the sender’s identity, she made the mistake of giving away her son’s name, BirminghamLive reports . But after she began messaging the number in her native Spanish and received replies back in Spanish, Mrs Briscoe saw this as “a real affirmation that it was my son”.
The impersonator soon went on to explain that they had a number of outstanding bills to pay. Mrs Briscoe soon fell victim to the so-called ‘mother and father’ scam, making four separate payments and draining all her savings after being convinced that her son needed help.
Mrs Briscoe, who lives in Dorset, admitted that she “still feels very angry” about the situation. Her bank Santander, who said that their customer had been warned about WhatsApp scams, was able to get back £5,000 - but half of the money is still lost to fraudsters.
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