When a child asks for help because he is in difficulty, parents, without thinking twice, rush to his aid to lend him a hand. And so it was for a 82-year-old elderly man from Cremona who fell into the network of a cyber criminal who posed as his sonclaiming to having had problems with the phone and asking for a top-up of 992 euros to be able to buy a new one.
“Hi dad, I can’t hear you, I’m Paolo, what a mess today…”, writes the scammer on WhatsApp, misleading the elderly man, who actually has a son called Paolo. “The anger is that I had to block the ATM,” he reads in the screenshots of the messages. “Now I’m at the phone shop to see if they can help me because my phone tracking was turned off. The only thing they can do is make me recover all my contacts. I need your help. While waiting I saw an iPhone on sale for 992 euros, could you help me purchase it. The dealer tells me that he accepts it Mooney top-up which is carried out at the tobacconist. As soon as you arrive at the tobacconist, write to me, so I can give you the details to top up.”
The old man, out of breath and impatient to help his son, left the house to reach the tobacconist, when met the neighbor, who, seeing him anxious, asked him what had happened to him. The man explained her story to her and the woman warned him. “Look, it’s a scam, be careful. There are plenty of them around.”. At that point a light bulb went on for the old man. First he phoned his son, who obviously lost his mind, and then he tried to call the number from which he had received all the messages. No reply. “You scoundrels, know that the matter doesn’t end here”wrote the 82-year-old, who turned to his lawyer Monia Ferrari.
“At first he didn’t want to press charges because he was ashamed”said the lawyer, “but I insisted. It’s easy to fall into the trap, because these scammers inform themselves and manage to know everything about their victims. We will file a complaint with police post. I exported the chat from which you can see the number. These people must be identified and stopped.”
Watch out, therefore, for this new frontier of scams which is making the rounds among messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and SMS. Fraudsters use ingenious tactics to try to empty victims’ bank accounts, leveraging good faith and trust.
Sara Pizzorni
© All rights reserved
