One morning in February whilst Paul Chase, 72, from Prenton, was at work, he received a phone call from a man claiming to be from the Fraud Department at Santander. This man then told Paul that he had identified some suspicious activity on his debit card. The supposed Santander representative identified himself as “Clive” and told Paul that before the conversation could begin, he had to ask him a few questions regarding his account. These questions consisted of Paul confirming his date of birth, the first and third numbers of his passcode and a couple of examples of direct debits that had been recently paid out.
Paul said that the man had sounded “professional” and that he was “patient, and understanding” when it came to Paul’s understanding of technology and that he was given no reason to doubt “that he wasn’t whom he said he was” so co-operated.
Paul was told that payment of over £300 had been attempted on Amazon and after confirming that this was not him, Paul was asked whether he had received a text message from Royal Mail lately.
He told Express.co.uk: “I then remembered that I did get a message from Royal Mail a few days earlier and I did fill out the details to pay the delivery fee, but I didn’t think anything of this as I was waiting for a parcel from America.
“Now, looking back, I know that this was where the scam started.”
Clive then turned the scam up another notch and told Paul that there had been a “sinister development”. He said that…
