A young woman is urging people to be wary of phone calls claiming to be An Garda Síochána.
Ava O'Reilly's parents received a phone call claiming to be from Ranelagh garda station after her phone was stolen, a station that doesn't exist.
The scammers said that they had her phone and asked for the passcode details.
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Luckily, Ava's family and friends quickly realised that the call was from scammers.
Unfortunately, other people have not been as lucky with many falling victim to the scam over the past few weeks.
Ava told Dublin Live that her phone was stolen from her bag during a night out on Camden Street on March 7.
She said: "It was around 2:30am just outside the Camden when I bumped into somebody that I know from home.
"I was just chatting to them and my phone was in my bag while I was standing there.
"The conversation was literally two minutes. It was a tiny little bag. After the conversation, I couldn't find my phone in my bag. When I looked on the ground , my ID and bank cards were on the ground.
"Someone had obviously been watching me and as soon as they saw I was talking, they opened my bag, put their hand in and whipped the phone out.
"When they whipped my phone out, my cards went flying. They must have taken it that quick."
The 23-year-old went home with her friends after looking everywhere for the phone. However, early the next morning her parents received a suspicious but convincing phone call.
They were listed as the young woman's emergency contacts.
She said: "Me and my friend went home. Then my parents received a call off an unknown number at 6am.
"He used a name and he said that he was from Ranelagh garda station. He told my mam that there was an arrest made and that he had three iPhones. He was asking my mam if she could describe the phone to him.
"He got my mam's number off the phone. He obviously knew that it would be my mam that he was ringing.
"Then my dad took the phone off her and he started asking questions. The 'guard' asked my dad if he knew my pin numbers.
"When my dad said he would ring him back the man started acting weirdly. He said he was changing shifts and that someone else would call them later.
"My dad passed on my friend Aoife's number as she was with me. We then got about 6 or 7 missed phone calls.
"They all said 'no caller ID'. My dad then copped that there was no garda station in Ranelagh.
"So my dad texted Aoife straight away and said not to give any information on the phone.
"They were trying to unlock the phone. The man rang Aoife again and said the same line and gave the same name.
"Aoife then said she knew that there wasn't a garda station in Ranelagh. He hung the phone up immediately."
Ava is now urging people to be wary of scam callers especially during stressful times when people are at their most vulnerable.
She said: "I was shocked. I had never experienced anything bad while going out. I was just talking to friends. It was in a safe place in my bag. You had to properly open it to get it. I was keeping an eye on my phone the whole night.
"It made me feel vulnerable that someone might have been watching me.
"The fact that they rang my mam and dad at 6am. They caught them off guard. They were asleep. Maybe, someone might have thought that it was the guards-people that you can trust.
"Always ask questions and don't be so willing to give information that easy."
A garda spokesman said: "Gardaí attended an incident of theft from a person that occurred on Camden Street, Dublin 8 at approximately 2am, Sunday, 6th March 2022.
"No injuries were sustained in the course of this incident and no arrests have been made.
"Investigations ongoing."
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