One common scam involves a criminal telephoning a victim and claiming to be a Police officer. Typically, the scammer will claim to be a police officer from Scotland Yard, or sometimes from a local police station. The scammer claims they are investigating suspicious activity on the victim’s bank account and asks if the victim would be willing ‘to assist the police’ in their enquiries.

Over the course of a few more calls the scammer aims to gain the victim’s trust and will typically tell the victim that they are assisting in an undercover operation, and they should not speak to family, friends, their bank or any other police officers about the fact that they are ‘assisting the police’. The reasons given are that part of the investigation has revealed that the victim’s bank employees are involved in defrauding customers and some corrupt police officers may even be involved. The victim will then be instructed to move all their money to an account with a different bank and then to provide all the new banking details to the bogus police officer, including all new bank card details.

Alternatively, the victim is sometimes told to withdraw several thousand pounds in cash so that a plain clothes police officer can collect it in order to examine fingerprints on the notes. Sometimes the victim is even asked to take the cash to a supermarket carpark where it will be collected from them.

A Police Officer will never:

• ask you for your bank details or PIN.

• ask you to transfer funds to another account.

• ask you to hand over cash or bank cards to a courier.

• ask you to 'assist' an investigation by doing any of the above.

• state that you are committing a crime by not complying.

You can read more about common scams at the Action Fraud website.

*There have been instances of this type of scam in Sherborne in the last month.

#PCSO6269 #ActionFraud #ScamAware #DorsetPolice #SherbornePolice #Money #Financial #Theft #Scam #Banking #Fraud