A mum almost lost thousands after nearly being caught out by an 'incredibly believable' scam, which made her believe she was messaging her daughter via WhatsApp.
Sports journalist Jacqui Oatley shared screenshots of the incident on Twitter, hoping to warn others against being scammed by the same process - which saw the fraudster message her mum and ask her to transfer over a large sum of money urgently.
Oatley wrote: "I’m keen to warn you about a scam which my lovely, kind mum so nearly fell for. It was incredibly believable.
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"Someone pretends to be you but on a different number, contacts someone close to you and asks them to quickly pay a bill for you before you pay them back."
The scammer had reached out to Oatley's mum on WhatsApp, beginning the conversation by saying: "Hi mum, it’s me, this is my new number. You can save this number and delete the old one."
After checking whether or not she'd lose photos from their previous conversations, Oatley's mum tried asked a personal question, which was met with a convincing yet vague response.
Saying they had had the ‘worse day ever’, the scammer then went on to tell her that they had a problem.
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When Oatley's mum asked if she should phone, they replied: “Can we call tomorrow? I’ve got bills that I need to pay but I can’t get into my online banking because its on my old phone and this number is not registered to my bank and it will take about to 2 days to be registered. Could you pay them for me? I’ll pay it back this week.”
Her mum said she could, asking what to do, to which the scammer said: “I’ll send the details.”
After firing over bank details, the scammer asked for £2,291.34 - along with ‘prove of the payment’.
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“Can you say anything I’m stressed... Mum?” they added after not hearing back.
Oatley said that, thankfully, the scammer’s ‘terrible’ spelling and grammar alerted her mum in the end, but it had still been a close call.
Many others commented to share their own horror stories, with one saying it had also sadly happened to their mum.
Someone else wrote: "My mum fell for exactly the same thing. Literally the same opening message and sent them £2900."
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A third said: "Same thing happened to my mum. she thought something was off when they called her 'mami'."
Another asked: "How on earth can they get the name to appear as you on a device that isn’t yours? Your mums phone is the one that needs to recognize the number and assign a name to it, based on her contact list. That is what I thought at least. Chilling stuff."
A fifth advised: "Anything like that has got to be worthy of a call first. I'd never send that sort of money without checking first. That's the real message."
Jess Hardiman