PCSO's attended Lloyds Bank in Southport on Friday 20th April, after alert staff at the bank were concerned about an elderly customer trying to withdraw £10,000.

The victim, told the officers that he received a call from a withheld number from someone claiming to be a police officer. He has then been given a number to phone, 161. he has called this and spoken to someone he believed to be a "CID officer" who told him that his money was at risk in the bank as the officers are investigating corrupt bank staff and that he needed to withdraw £10,000 and not to discuss it with anyone. If asked by staff at the bank he was to say he was purchasing a car as the staff "can’t be trusted" at the bank.

Staff at the bank have stopped him making this transaction as it sounded suspicious and called police on 101.
The gentleman was asked to purchase a cheap mobile phone for direct contact with the 'investigating police officers' and he would then receive instructions for collection of the money to be examined.
The gentleman purchased a phone from a mobile phone store in Southport. PCSO's took the gentleman back to the store to have withheld numbers blocked from the phone and took other steps to prevent future fraud over other phones in the man's possession.

On this occasion, thanks to the alert staff at Lloyds Bank and action taken by the PCSO's, the fraudsters did not receive the money however, there have been instances with the same scam where the victim has withdrawn the money but then became suspicious and refused to hand it over to a courier. Following this refusal the victim has been told by phone that they would be arrested if they didn’t comply with the officers request, and that the bank notes were marked and were worthless so they wouldn’t be reimbursed unless they handed them over.

Very few people contact the police when scammed and never tell anyone because of embarrassment, this scam is very convincing no matter what age you are! ALWAYS report any such attempted fraud or scam.

REPORT TO ACTION FRAUD
0300 123 2040
www.actionfraud.police.uk

REPORT ONLINE
www.merseyside.police.uk

REPORT ON TWITTER
@MerPolCC

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Merseyside Police CC

CALL US ON 101

CALL 999

It is a good system that banks have and can call the police. Read recently of an elderly gent buying a rolls Royce of ebay for 10k. Bank did their .. is the money for anything nice etc and called police. It was a scam

Excellent work by the Bank staff and the police.

Nice work! Good to hear that some people are on the ball - saved this man a lot of heartache. Well done!

Do you know there is some "SCUM " out there, barstewards the lot of them.

Well done!

I got a weird email saying that I owed a large amount of money to someone, and to follow the instructions to get my finances back in order.

Fortunately I didn't follow the instructions... but it does make me feel somewhat nervous, now, about online banking.