Barclays Scam

The firms customer we mentioned earlier fell victim to a safe account scam, which is a type of bank impersonation. This is where the scammer pretends to be the bank, and convinces the victim they need to move the money out of the account because it is under threat.

The victim in that case said:

“I received a text message supposedly from Barclays' fraud team, warning me about a fraudulent transaction and to expect a phone call. Shortly after I received a call from an 02476 Barclays phone number, so I believed it to be from my bank.”

This is a common approach used by scammers to target the bank's customers, as well as customers from all other banks.

Fraudsters can ‘spoof’ banks' numbers or create numbers extremely similar to the banks, meaning the call or SMS appears to come from the bank. With SMS messages, they can also join the chain of previously trusted SMS messages received from the bank again making them seem legitimate.

They use this to convey legitimacy and convince you that it is the bank on the phone trying to protect your funds. They promote a ‘safe account’ set up for you to transfer the money to, but unfortunately this account is one controlled by the scammers. In that case, Barclays did not appear to have refunded the victim despite the convincing nature of the scam.

A famous actor recently fell victim to a similar type of scam impersonating Barclays where they called from the bank’s phone number, and warned the public to watch out for the warning signs.

Barclays recently warned about a spoofing impersonation scam targeting their customers. In this instance, their customers would receive an SMS from Barclays’ numbers providing a one time passcode (OTP) and listing a payment the customer would not recognise.

They were told to call the firm's fraud team, but this number connected them straight to scammers who would try to trick them into sending money to a safe account. They would use the OTP in the message as a sign that someone else had accessed the account.

A recent example read: “Barclays Alert. Your One Time Passcode is 083635 for a payment of 402.65GBP to ASDA. If this was NOT you, call our fraud team on 0330 165 9503.”

With the cost living crisis, fraudsters have started impersonating councils offering refunds, and energy companies offering refunds or rebates. The firm has reported itself that it has seen this, and it is important the public hang up when someone calls them offering this.

The aim of the scammer in this example is to try and get you to login to your account to check the refund you have received while the scammer has remote access of your device, at which point they show you they have sent you funds by accident and convince you to send the money back. In fact, they have just changed a line of code on the screen to display a different amount. Victims are then left out of pocket for the money that was sent.