Annette Jefferys, a NatWest customer was scammed by fraudsters into giving them £17,500 but the bank gave her only 10p. The fraudsters were able to generate an authentic “activation code” for her bank account. Exploiting a weakness in the NatWest system the culprits first locked the bank account and then obtain a code to unlock it by using publicly available information. This case is is among many as new figures show that fraud now accounts for more than half of all crime.
The culprits posed was NatWest employees, called Ms Jefferys and said her account was under attack by fraudsters and she would have to transfer money to another account. While such a scam is common, the difference this time was that they didn't ask Ms Jefferys to make the transfer immediately. The most convincing part of incident was when the fraudsters asked her to long into her online banking account while they were on the call. As they had already frozen the account she couldn't log in. They were able to assure her they would send an “activation code” which would enable her to access her account again.
In the meanwhile they took out £17,500 by impersonating Ms Jeffreys on the NatWest website. She realised it was a scam when they called the following day and said they would pay compensation into the account for the inconvenience, a tune of £1000.