A Liveline listener took to the airwaves on Monday afternoon to warn the public of a WhatsApp mobile phone scam which tricked her.
Patricia contacted Joe Duffy’s RTE Radio One program to reveal that she gave money for a new phone to a scammer, who she thought was her daughter.
The scammer, posing as Patricia’s daughter, said that she needed money immediately after losing her phone. Concerned for her daughter’s safety, as she is in Bangkok, Patricia felt obliged to send the money.
‘We have a daughter who is traveling aboard at the minute and she bought a new simcard in Bangkok. Then we got a text on Sunday saying “Dad I lost my new phone, I’m in the store, this is a replacement phone number. Would you be able to send me money to get the new phone, I’ll give it back to you on Tuesday when the banks open”.
‘Of course we weren’t going to leave her in trouble so far away, of course we’d help out with this… We were hacked through the family WhatApp… that in itself was scary enough. The person was very persistent in hindsight I should’ve known it wasn’t our daughter,’ she said.
Looking back on the experience, Patricia noted that her daughter ‘wouldn’t be so persistent’ normally but the scammer’s texts were convincing.
She explained: ‘Some of it was okay like “come on mam it’s my choice to ask for the money. I have the money in my account, I just need my phone as soon as possible”. We were hemming and hawing about this money because why are you paying so much money for a phone, can’t you just get a second-hand phone.’
Eventually Patricia gave the scammer her Revolut password and authorized the transaction on the banking app before realizing it wasn’t her daughter.
The following day we got a photo from our daughter saying “we’ve arrived in our new hostel”. I said “you know you have to give that money back tomorrow”. She said “what money?”. She was on the phone immediately and she was distraught because we were scammed and the money was given to this person.
‘It was the first she heard of it because we don’t hear from her every day,’ she said.
Since the interaction happened, Patricia asks her daughter ‘questions only she would know’ whenever she gets a phone call from her.
Another caller named Sinead called in to share her story of how she managed to catch out a WhatApp scammer pretending to be her son.
I got the text saying “hi mam, my phone is broken. I’m in a phone shop and because I can’t get through to my account here can you send me €550 for a new phone”. I said “which of you [her children] is it?”
‘They gave me the name… I said “that’s okay I’ll do this for you”… I didn’t feel comfortable with it and said “can you call me”, they said “I can’t call you my phone is broken”. I said “but you’re in a phone shop wouldn’t someone lend you a phone?”.
‘I phone my son on the landline… he had no broken phone. I realized this was a scam, what made me suspicious was they said “aw It’s okay if you don’t want to do it” and he’d never talk like that,’ she told Joe.
Sinead decided to play along with the scammer for a little while before eventually telling them to ‘buzz off’ and leave her alone.