Police raise money for Portslade pensioner after phone scam

A 78-year-old man from Portslade as conned out of £750 in a telephone banking scam.

The pensioner was left with next to nothing to live on after the scam, which moved police officers to set up a collection for the victim.

After PCSO Nick Packham spoke about the case on Twitter a number of local residents have also offered to make donations for the man who lost money after being contacted by a man with an Indian accent that claimed to be form the Santander Bank fraud squad.

He was told money had been taken from his account and was asked to send £550 through Western Union to fund the investigation. He was later asked to send a further £200 in order to have people arrested.

When he was asked for a third time to send another £200 to fund court fees he contacted his bank and discovered he had been the victim of a fraud.

PCSO Nick Packham said: “This is an evil scam that targets the most vulnerable members of our community. No doubt many of these criminals’ calls fall upon stony ground, but just once in a while their phony stories find a victim, such as this gentlemen, who is taken in by them.

“He is obviously very upset and is concerned that he now has little money until his next pension payment comes through. We have had a whip round in the station to help him along and I should like to express enormous thanks to several of our local Twitter followers who have offered both food parcels and cash.”

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Posted by on January 18, 2012. Filed under Latest News,Portslade. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry