Long story short, an eldery-ish chap I know got caught by the 'amazon prime is charging you' scam this week, he fell for it far enough that not only did they have remote control of his computer where they setup a paypal account, added his debit card details and then added a pre-authorised payment to a skype account but they also had access to his bank accounts online, they transferred £500 out of the current account to his savings account to prove that 'amazon prime' was incorrectly charging him, then transferred £3,500 from the savings account back to the current account at which point they started trying to get him to send them the £3000 over payment via western union, he belatedly twigged at this point and put a stop to it.
He went to his bank in person and they confirmed the money had been moved around, he has a printed statement direct from his bank showing this, what I cannot get my head around is why the scammers didn't just transfer the money to one of their accounts the moment they had control? Is there something in place that would allow his bank to have reversed whatever they did?
I'm not clued up on the current bank transfer stuff but when I used it last I'm sure I was warned it was basically irreversible, what gives? Seems like he was amazingly lucky to me, lost around £90 via paypal to skype and a bit of stress but could have been far worse.
He went to his bank in person and they confirmed the money had been moved around, he has a printed statement direct from his bank showing this, what I cannot get my head around is why the scammers didn't just transfer the money to one of their accounts the moment they had control? Is there something in place that would allow his bank to have reversed whatever they did?
I'm not clued up on the current bank transfer stuff but when I used it last I'm sure I was warned it was basically irreversible, what gives? Seems like he was amazingly lucky to me, lost around £90 via paypal to skype and a bit of stress but could have been far worse.