A HSBC customer has explained one thing that “let her guard down” before being scammed out of £25,000. Suni Wan received a text message from someone who she thought was her bank, HSBC, on December 1, which told her there was fraudulent activity on her account. She believed as the message appeared in the same thread as her official HSBC messages appeared. The text claimed a new device had logged into her account and that, if it wasn’t her, she needed to call the number in the message immediately. Upon calling the number, Ms Wan was scammed out of £25,000. Suni told A Current Affair: “I was aware not to click on links and emails or attachments. I’m usually on guard. But because the text message came from the HSBC number, I let my guard down.” She then rang the supposed HSBC number and was told a Samsung S8 phone had logged onto her account. READ MORE Met Office breaks silence over 15-day ‘snow bomb’ hitting UK within days She gave her full name, address and date of birth to the man on the phone and only grew suspicious when the man on the line started asking questions about her cryptocurrency account Coinspot. She said: “It finally clicked to me, why would HSBC be concerned about my Coinspot, they wouldn’t pass my details to a representative they would tell me to call Coinspot directly.” Ms Wan rang HSBC immediately and asked them to freeze her account but the scammers had already taken £25k. She added: “The hardest thing for me is to stop blaming myself, like I keep blaming myself, maybe I should have noticed it earlier.” A spokesperson from HSBC told A Current Affair: “For customer confidentiality reasons we can’t discuss specific customer situations. HSBC takes customer security very seriously and we thoroughly investigate any reported cases of scam or fraud. “The industry has seen an increase in fraudsters using ‘text spoofing’ to deliberately falsify the telephone number to appear as a genuine bank text message.”
HSBC customer issues £25,000 warning after ‘letting her guard down
