I'm surprised these morons can dress themselves

One of the things I love about Longriders blog is when he goes off on a rant about idiots being scammed out of their money

On scams and scamming, a friend of mine was targeted a few days ago. Her son is at university and he apparently sent her a text from a different number to his usual one telling her that he had accidentally put his phone through the wash and needed money to buy a new one. As this seemed odd to her and her antennae were twitching, she phoned him on his normal number and he answered, completely bemused by the washing machine story. She did message the scammers back with just two words…

Indeed. That's the way to do it. This isn't:

In November last year Sheila got a message from a WhatsApp number she did not recognise.
The message said: "Hi mum, lost my phone. I've been searching everywhere for it but I can't find it.
"I've reported it lost and called the insurance company.
"I can't be reached on my old number anymore - this is my new one so can you save it right away."

It sounded very credible to Sheila as her daughter Louise had previously lost her phone at a music festival.

Sheila responded to this message thinking it was her daughter and the scammers used this as opportunity to ask Sheila for money.

Thinking her daughter in trouble, Sheila ended up sending money to scammers, but it didn't end there.

Over the next couple of hours, she ended up sending four separate payments up to £5,000.

It may have sounded credible, but it was so easy to figure out. Ring the girl on her usual number

And what's the deal with sending her twenty thousand pounds? You don't send your kid twenty thousand pounds if they've lost their phone and clearly have insurance. You don't even send them twenty

When the request came for a fifth payment, Sheila become suspicious.

That's when she became suspicious? I'm lost for words...

Erm...

Seriously...

Some of these scams can seem credible and can even be considered clever, but they're all so easy to verify if you've got a head on your shoulders. Some, like this one, are on a par with winning the Nigerian lottery, yet people keep handing their money over like unstoppable bellends

Luckily, Sheila was able to get her money back from the bank

Why? Just why? It was not the banks fault and they could have done nothing at all to prevent this moron falling for it. If they give the money back in these situations, it's just free money for the scammers

The banks should be telling people to get stuffed. If these cases are publicised and the 'victim' is shafted good and hard with a total loss of their money, it might just encourage other brain deads to think a little harder before handing over theirs. Then again, it might not, but there's still no reason for the banks to pay it back

If I was in charge at the bank, I would have closed her account and told her to take a walk, as she's clearly a liability

The word 'Moron' is not strong enough to describe these people