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How to fall for a banking scam: your quick and easy guide

ARE you concerned that when the inevitable call from banking scammers arrives, you will be too savvy to fall for it and end up keeping all your money? Follow these steps: 

1: Believe your bank would call you about a scam

Your bank hates you. Its ideal situation is that you pay money into your account regularly and leave it there forever. It certainly has no plans to contact you. To fall for a scam it’s crucial you’re convinced the call warning of a security risk is genuine, even if your bank does not even answer calls about security risks as you will later find out.

2: Fall for details

You made a payment to Amazon of £5.61 for a stainless-steel spice shaker on Saturday, and this person knows about it? Must be your bank. There’s no way anyone could get that information because you haven’t told anyone you plan to take your spice-shaking to the next level.

3: Give the bank information they really should already know

Convinced, you now begin furnishing the scammer pretending to be your bank with information from your bank, who you believe they are. For example a pin number, a password or a one-time only code which comes with the message ‘Never give this to anyone even if they say they are from your bank’. Continue to suspect nothing.

4: Move all your money to a safe account

The most crucial step of all is that, prompted by a stranger, you agree to move all your money from your account – where you can see it currently is, with no deductions whatsoever – to an account number they have given you. Despite this being the modus operandi of every scammer, do it regardless. What can go wrong?

5: Belatedly realise you’ve been scammed

Bank balance suddenly zero? Realised the nice man protecting you from fraud was, irony of ironies, a fraudster? Contact your bank and demand they refund all the money you gave away by ignoring their explicit instructions at every step.

6: Sad photo

It’s time for your sad photo for the media, whether local press or, if you managed to lose six figures, a national newspaper. Practice your ‘I’ve lost £78,000’ face in a mirror. You only hope your example will help others who, like you, pay no attention whatsoever to increasingly frequent stories about bank scams.

Foreign countries absolutely shit at sending postcards

NATIONS other than Britain cannot so much as convey a simple postcard to its destination without taking months, it has emerged. 

First-hand research by UK holidaymakers has found that, regardless of country, an A5 rectangle with the correct postage attached baffles foreign post offices for up to 12 weeks.

Eleanor Shaw of Stevenage said: “From Spain to Sri Lanka, no matter how many postboxes they seem to have, pop a postcard in and watch them panic.

“Instead of doing their jobs and dispatching the postcard promptly to its destination, the lazy, feckless, probably unionised locals take one look at it and call an immediate siesta and even when they get back up they’re straight on the ouzo.

“What’s so hard about it? The address is right there with UK written in capitals. Yet I’m regularly back from my holidays for two months before the first amusing picture of a large-cocked donkey manages to limp home.”

Emma Bradford of Stroud agreed: “It’s a shame these third-rate backwaters that we deign to visit for our fortnight’s all-inclusive aren’t able to meet the exacting postal standards of Brits.

“I don’t even bother with postcards now. As much as I’d like to tell everyone about the weather, how cheap drinks are and that Darren burnt himself and got the shits on day one, by the time it arrives my smug superiority’s worn off and I’ve been back at work a month.

“Instead I simply post six to eight hundred Instagram photos accompanied by captions like ‘30ºC!’ and ‘I’ve had worse Monday mornings!’ which people enjoy just as much.

“No, I’ve never sent a postcard to a foreign country from Britain. But if I did I’m sure it’d be there next day.”

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