“
Hello Mr. P. I am the opposition adviser of your bank.
I see strange movements on your account.
You must have been scammed.
This Sunday in July, when Louis* answers the phone, he is relieved.
He suspected that he had been scammed by answering a text message sent by Ameli.
He had just filled in his bank details.
"
I know why you're calling me
," he replies confidently.
The adviser then told him that he had observed fraudulent payments on his account: 2200 euros to a Gucci site, 3100 euros to Senegal…
“
The situation was urgent.
And above all very vexing
, ”comments today the thirty-year-old who tries to explain why he, who worked for several years in the financial world, was able to fall into the trap so easily.
Because the scam did not stop there: the banker who offered to make maneuvers on his account to block fraudulent payments was in fact also a crook.
For more than a week, Louis had a total of 15,000 euros stolen from his account.
All his savings.
Was he too naive, as his relatives say, or are the scammers especially formidable?
This scam is well known to the police.
They call it
the “hello scam
”
.
"
It affects all audiences
", comments divisional commissioner Vincent Kozierow, of the means of payment fraud brigade of the Directorate of Judicial Police of the Paris police headquarters.
“
These scammers will try to extract as much money as possible.
The objective is therefore to target people who have high ceilings
,” adds the commissioner.
And they are generally knowledgeable.
Who are these scammers and how do they get so much information?
“Scam alert”
This article is the second in a series on scams, made with the help of our subscribers.
The objective is to alert, prevent and inform our readers, while hundreds of thousands of French people are defrauded each year.
We interviewed five victims and one certainty emerges: from one scam to another...
This article is for subscribers only.
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