The retired teacher, who did not want to be named, received a message addressing him as 'Dad' last week. That vulnerability, heightened by the pandemic, almost caught out Cally Beaton's father: he nearly lost £1,800 to a WhatsApp scammer pretending to be one of his children. It just shows how all of us are vulnerable to these scams.' She became suspicious and rang Katrina's partner, who confirmed that her daughter's phone was fine.Įlizabeth, who lives with retired church minister Hugh, in Tamworth, Staffordshire, says: 'Those messages could easily have come from my daughter. 'Hi Mum, I dropped my phone down the toilet, so I can't use it anymore,' it read.Īt first the retired prep school head advised her to pop her phone into a box of rice to dry it out, but then the scammer began asking her for cash.Įlizabeth says: 'The message said it was for an urgent bill which needed to be paid by tomorrow and sent me the bank details to transfer the money.' The grandmother-of-three was on holiday in Eastbourne when she received a WhatsApp message. It's horrible.'Įlizabeth Baker, 70, came close to losing more than £500 after a scammer pretended to be her daughter Katrina. 'Once you realise it's a scam, you feel like a fool. 'My son rang me in a panic saying she desperately needed the money, so we said we'd make the transfer. So when the text came up, we didn't think for a second it could be anybody else. The grandfather, 75, says: 'My granddaughter has a very unusual spelling of her name.
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