Fraud Alert

Hi Resident 

Please take time to read this message, as it contains information about fraud and techniques used to part you from your personal information.  

Fraudsters or scammers (the polite term to describe them) are regularly looking for ways to extract your personal and financial information.  

Currently, we have received information that some of our residents in Scarborough have been targeted by fraudsters who have claimed that they are the police and giving various reasons for the call including cloned cards and potential victims phone lines being used in scams. The fraudsters have been asking for banking details and details of jewellery at the residents’ addresses.  

One of my multi-agency colleagues received a call last week, claiming to be her banks fraud team. They were trying to get her to give them a one-time passcode (OTP) which had been sent on a text message. Luckily for her, the signal was poor and she spoke to the team before sending the code, but she said it sounded so genuine too.  

Had she have given the code to the fraudster, they would have been able to use her card to purchase products, and my colleague wouldn’t have had an ability to claim against this with her bank, as the banks warn us not to give a OTP to anyone.  

Fraudsters will try to use your information or email addresses to access your accounts.  

I’ve heard the phrase, “I don’t have any money, they can’t scam me.”  This may be the case, but we all have information which can be taken and used for other purposes. This also includes taking out bank accounts and other products such as loans.  

Take time to check with your mobile phone providers for fraud detection and prevention tools. We are with a mainstream supplier on our work phones; we are alerted to suspicious calls before we answer them.  

If you would like a copy of the Little Book of Phone Scams via email, please reply to this message and I or one of our team will send one to your inbox.  

Kind Regards  

Nathan