Hampshire Police warn of spike in courier scams after Winchester man loses £15,500
ITV News Meridian's Lucy Warhurst spoke to a man from Winchester who was scammed out of £15,500
Hampshire Police has issued an urgent warning after a spike in courier scams across the region, with five cases in the county in just one week.
David Spurling, in his 80s from Winchester, was duped out of £15,500 after a call from someone claiming to be an officer.
David says he is "furious" with the scammers and spoke about the ordeal to help prevent others from falling victim.
David Purling warns others against scammers
He said: "I got a call from the police saying there'd been fraudulent activity detected on my Tesco credit card. They thought it was part of a wider conspiracy.
"He explained that they were an undercover operation trying to track down a group of fraudsters comprising counterfeit Euro notes and also money laundering."
David withdrew several thousand pounds in Euros from foreign exchange counters. The group involved faked identity checks and pretended to insure his money.He was told it needed to be collected for forensic examination by the police and a courier was arranged to collect it.
Mr Purling said: "The total amount involved is a fairly staggering £15,500. Just a staggering amount."I'm sickened that in fact I've lost this money, but I did it with the best of intentions. I genuinely thought I was bringing these people to book."
DC Owain Davies from Hampshire Police says there have been seven cases in the last month
Detective Constable Owain Davies, Hampshire Police Economic Crime Unit, said: "We have unfortunately had a real spike recently.
"The courier scam or courier fraud as we also call it is where a victim, completely out of the blue, will receive a phone call from a scammer, explaining to the person who answers the phone that they are from the police, or sometimes it's a bank, and that they need their help to investigate quite a high-level secret investigation that they're conducting."He says there have been at least seven cases over the past month across Southampton, the New Forest, Alton, Farnborough and Winchester. But he says there are some key warning signs.The Detective Constable said: "The main two things that I think people need to realise and understand is that one, police and the banks will never ever ask for you to go and withdraw money, cash from your bank account, building society account for us to collect.
"We will never direct you to go to a shop to buy high-value jewellery or watches and we'll never ask you to buy gold bullion that gets sent to your house."
The recommendation to anyone who is concerned about a scam, is to take the caller's details, hang up, and dial 101 from a different phone, to ensure the scammers are not still on the line.David says they can be very convincing and he wants to prevent others from getting conned.Mr Spurling said: "I think this is really an insidious thing why I am so furious with these scammers because the police are one of the pillars of our democracy and we're justly proud of them and this is making their job far more difficult."I think they're just the pits. If I can help a little bit in publicising this and relieving people of probably far more strain than I've gone through, I feel that will be a good thing."
Barclays has returned David's money to him and Tesco is still investigating.
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