Nationwide worker recalls 'red flag' that stopped woman sending £90k to scammer

27 July 2023 , 10:32

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The woman (not pictured) tried to send £90,000 to the frauster (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

A pensioner in her 80s was almost scammed out of £90,000 - but bank staff used an emergency procedure to stop the transaction.

The unnamed woman tried to send her life savings to a young man who claimed to be a family friend.

Staff at the Bromsgrove branch of the Nationwide Building Society suspected something wasn’t right and stopped the transaction from going through.

Sophie Williams, who works at the branch, said the woman was a regular customer who wanted to lend the man £90,000 “for an investment”.

The fraudster came in with pictures of land he said he wanted to buy with the money.

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"He looked quite nervous, he spoke quite fast... [but] the biggest red flag for me was he spoke for her and I knew her," said Ms Williams in a BBC Money Box interview.

"He just knew too much about her. Even if you take your mum or your auntie shopping or to the bank you don't necessarily know the figures in her bank account."

To buy herself time to speak to her manager, Ms Williams managed to get the pair to leave the branch by saying she needed to see more ID and documentation.

She then sent out an alert on the Nationwide system in case the fraudster tried to visit another branch.

When the customer came back the next day with the extra documents, Ms Williams initiated the Banking Protocol.

Under this scheme, bank staff are trained to recognise when someone is potentially being scammed and to call the police.

Police arrived at the bank branch within five minutes. They then took the customer and fraudster into separate rooms and spoke to them both.

Ms Williams has not seen the "family friend" since.

She continued: “He had groomed her... He was going to potentially take her life savings from her and would leave her with next to nothing."

The Banking Protocol was launched in 2016 and since then has prevented over £258million of customer money from being lost to fraud.

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• Episodes of Money Box are available on BBC Sounds

Levi Winchester