Aberdeenshire Council’s Trading Standards service today issued the latest bulletin on local doorstep crimes.

COLD CALLING
One resident in the Garioch area has been getting pestered recently by a high volume of calls, apparently from Amazon. The calls were all pre-recorded but came from a variety of phone numbers, both land lines and mobile numbers, from as early as 6am till as late as 11pm, often there are several such calls in any one day.

The calls advise that £799 has been taken from the resident’s Amazon account and to press ‘1’ for further information.

This resident was not unduly concerned by the calls as they didn’t have an Amazon account and they knew full well that the calls had nothing to do with Amazon. It was a scam, probably from abroad and from a single source, which spoofed the numbers shown in Caller ID, to trick the recipient into answering.

The calls were intended to frighten the recipient into pressing ‘1’ on their keypad, so that the call was diverted to a high tariff service where the recipient would be charged as much as £3.60 per minute, then kept on hold for as long as 30 minutes before being cut off without ever speaking to anyone but having inadvertently racked up a whopping phone bill.

Call blocker devices or similar services from telephony providers can filter out as much as 95% of these calls so that the recipient never gets bothered by them. If you are being bothered by scam calls, high pressure sales calls or similar it might be worth speaking to your service provider to see if they can help.

Call blocker devices can also be helpful and can be obtained from such websites as trueCall at https://www.truecall.co.uk/ or CPR Call Blocker at https://www.cprcallblocker.com/ though it should be noted that other devices are available and you should do some research to see which one suits your needs and budget best.

Also, a new service which has recently gone live is the Stop Scams UK 159 service. This is a pilot service being provided by some of the major banks such as Barclays, Lloyds, Natwest and Santander and is supported by BT, Virgin, O2, Vodafone and others.

The principle is fairly simple: if you get a call from someone purporting to be from your bank (such as in a ‘safe account’ scam), simply hang up and then call 159.

This will put you though quickly to your own bank where you can report the matter to someone and discuss what to do next. Calls are charged at the national rate. Please note that this service is for suspicious calls only and shouldn’t be used to contact your bank for other reasons.

Further information on how to tackle these problems can be found on the Ofcom website at Ofcom; Unwanted Calls or at the Stop Scams UK website at https://stopscamsuk.org.uk/159

SOCIAL MEDIA SCAM
One resident in Formartine was recently contacted by a friend on a well-known social medium stating ‘I won money on this Covid lottery and saw your name on the list too! Have you got your winnings yet?”

The resident was then contacted by an ‘agent’ of the lottery to arrange payment of her winnings of more than £100,000. Firstly, the resident was instructed to buy several gift vouchers, photograph the vouchers and then send the photos to the agent, which she did, so that her winnings could be released in cash.

Next day, the resident was asked to buy more vouchers, in fact twice as much as the first batch, for ‘customs’ costs, then the money would be delivered the following morning, in cash. This she did.

The resident later spoke in person to her friend. The friend advised the resident that she had not won any money. It also appeared that her social media account had been hacked. The lottery win was a scam and the hacker was the scammer.

The social medium and the voucher company had taken no active part but had simply been used by the agent, or as we call them, “criminals”, to perpetrate the scam on the resident. In all likelihood the scammer had hacked the friend’s account and used it to message people about the scam, including the original message asking about the resident’s ‘win’.

The classic signs of a scam are there: winning a competition you didn’t enter (you can’t win it if you’re not in it), a message from a trusted ‘friend’ (establishes credibility), a large sum of cash winnings (bait), delivered in cash within days (near instant riches; who wouldn’t want that?). Also, why would there be customs costs for cash, which is legal tender and already present in vast amounts in the UK, so why the need to import cash?

The payoff for the scammer is the photos of the gift vouchers. First a little bit to see if the scam might work, then more when the first attempt is successful and the scammer gets bolder. Also, so long as the scammer can read the serial numbers on the photos of the vouchers, they can use them up to their full value.

They don’t physically need to possess the vouchers.

The scam has been reported to the social medium concerned who have taken down their profile, but she has already created another. This has also been reported to the medium.

Some points to consider:
• Always use a separate, strong password for each of your online accounts. This could be the traditional 9-12 characters (including a capital letter, a number and a special character such as a question mark), three random words or a password generated by your browser. Further information can be found here https://www.scotland.police.uk/advice-andinformation/internet-safety/cybercrime/
• If you believe any of your social media accounts has been compromised, report it immediately to that medium.• Post a message to your online friends on that medium warning them that you believe that your account has been compromised (hacked).
• Watch out for the warning signs of a scam or unexpected online contact from strangers (beware of geeks bearing gifts).
• If you think a scam is being perpetrated on you, report the matter to Police Scotland or Trading Standards immediately.
• If possible, search social media for the lottery, agent etc. and look for any posts advising that it is a scam. If you see such posts, heed them.
• If you have parted with any money, report the scam to your bank or credit card company to see if they can get a refund or compensate you.

MISCELLANEOUS
In previous bulletins we have covered articles on how some unscrupulous home appliance insurance companies have targeted elderly and vulnerable victims, calling them at home and persuading them to take out often costly and unnecessary insurance for appliances like fridges, washing machines and televisions.

It has recently come to our attention that the Information commissioner’s Office (ICO, https://ico.org.uk/ ) has taken a dim view of this and has taken action against five such companies.

These companies have been fined a total of £405,000 by the ICO and ordered to stop these practices immediately. Further details can be found at ICO takes action over predatory companies.

DISPOSABLE VAPES
Trading Standards work continues into the sales of disposable e-cigarettes (vapes). Worryingly, what it tends to show is that there is a widespread misunderstanding about the health risks these vapes pose to young people. There also appears to be a lack of knowledge about it being:
• a criminal offence for people under 18 years of age to buy a vape
• a criminal offence for people under 18 years of age to sell a vape to another person (even another youngster)
• a criminal offence for an adult to buy a vape on behalf of someone aged under 18 (a proxy purchase, usually outside a shop)
• a criminal offence for anyone to give a vape to someone aged under 18 anywhere (even their own child) and even if the vape wasn’t bought with the intention of doing so.

CONTACTS
For urgent Trading Standards matters, contact Aberdeenshire Council’s Trading Standards at 01467 537222. For non-urgent enquiries, please contact Consumer Advice Scotland at https://www.consumeradvice.scot/ or on 0808 164 6000.

Contact Police Scotland on 999 if you need urgent police assistance or 101 for non-urgent matters.

For more information about scams please visit Friends Against Scams at https://www.friendsagainstscams.org.uk/ or Take Five at https://takefivestopfraud.org.uk/