On Being Scammed

It was about half six and we were ferrying dishes of chicken to a table of children when my phone rang. It was the NatWest fraud department, calls were being recorded for monitoring purposes – I made wide-mouthed mimes to our guests, who hushed, briefly, mid-bite. Was this Eva Wiseman? It was. My hand floated to my head.

There had been some suspicious activity on my account, said Anthony on the phone. He read out the end of my card number, was this my card? It was. Somebody had attempted to transfer £250 to India from an IP address in Aberdeen. Was that me? It was not. “ABERDEEN!” I mouthed accusingly to my guests, who live near Inverness – you can see the Northern Lights from their kitchen! Anyway. “HAVE YOU ATTEMPTED TO TRANSFER £250 TO INDIA?” I continued to mouth. They didn’t understand. “NEVER MIND,” I mimed, crossly.

OK, said Anthony, then with my permission they were going to stop the transfer and freeze my current account. Thank you, I said, turning down the music and leaning away from the dinnertime gaggle to clutter through my tote bag and see if my card had been stolen. Nope, I told Anthony, triumphantly. That’s not unusual – people find the details online, he said, to which I said, ah. We went through security (was this my correct email, he asked, reading it slowly from his screen, was this my correct address?) I was blanching some spinach as we talked (“Sorry, I’m just blanching spinach!”), but held the phone on my shoulder with a tilted head – the vast bowl of leaves became a spoon’s worth and, as usual, I logged the transition as a metaphor, for what, as yet unclear.

It occurred to me that the scammer might read the Observer, where I had recently outed myself as being rubbish with money

It occurred to me, as I was waiting to be transferred to the something department (wasn’t concentrating, was plopping small heaps of unwanted spinach on children’s plates, “Just have ONE BITE,” I hissed) that the scammer attempting to transfer £250 to India from an IP address in Aberdeen, might… read The Observer. You see, a couple of weeks ago, I wrote right here at length about my inability to manage my money. I explained that I avoid looking at my bank balance, that I keep my savings in my current account, that I’m altogether silly with cash, to the extent that a financial advisor recently ghosted me. Was it possible, perhaps, that someone had read this and thought, right, here’s our mark? I thought, then, fair enough.

A new guy came on the line, Stuart, hello, can I confirm the last transaction from this account? I thought, deeply. Was it, maybe, a roll of really fab sparkly stickers in the shape of pencils, approximately £1.75? OK, and can I confirm the amount in this account? Ah, no, unfortunately not, as (if the fraudster had read my column, perhaps Stuart was yet to) I am (as detailed in recent column) psychologically unable to look at my balance, but I feel like, I FEEL LIKE (I walked out of the kitchen for privacy) it is between £100 and £10,000. A brief pause. Thank you. No, thank YOU, I said, thank you for calling, I really appreciate this service, it makes me feel like I’m being looked after, like there is a point to having a bank, that the man might not need to be entirely damned. From the kitchen came the sound of spinach being discarded. Said Stuart, “We’re very good at what we do.”

At which point, a worry pricked at my chest. Something small had been triggered inside me, some hooded switch. Wouldn’t it be classic, I thought, to be defrauded by an alleged fraud team. Wouldn’t it be classic ME. I paused. How do I know you are who you say you are, I asked, brilliantly. Said Stuart, we never ask for any passwords, or personal information – feel free to hang up and call back the number on your card, we understand completely. No no, I said, embarrassed.

So that’s all done for you now, your account has been frozen for 48 hours, but FCA guidelines mean we need to give you access to funds in that time, have you got a pen? I wrote down their instructions, how to generate a code that allows me to take out up to £130 without a card, very clever. OK! said Stuart, we’re going to switch off recording, you may hear a beep, and now, read out the four-digit code in order to verify (I think that was the word, verify, register, a serious word) it. Hmm, I thought. HMMM.

I shouldn’t be doing this, I thought. There is a small cave-like office inside my gut, in which I had a hushed meeting near my liver: Eva, you are getting a bad feeling here. Your choices are, hang up the phone (risk £250), stay on the phone (risk £130), or interrogate Stuart (risk being rude to a nice man just doing his job). I quickly did the maths, and realised it would take more than £130 for me to be rude to a call-centre worker, so I swallowed my concern and thanked him again when he repeated the news that I’d receive an email within 24 hours.

I woke around 5am the next morning, with the hollow knowledge that no email had come, nor was it ever going to. By 6am I was on the phone with NatWest (who, interestingly, DID ask for my birthday, account number, intimate details) who confirmed that this is now their most common scam, that their scripts were getting uncannily good, that no, it didn’t mean that I should feel like a humiliated, vulnerable elderly lady, and that they would be refunding me the £130 promptly. They also said it was highly likely the scammers would call back, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not the next week, but: they would call. My worry is, I’ll do the same thing all over again.

The Observer