Nasty tricks: This is how telephone scammers want to get your money - warning from the consumer advice center

Nasty tricks: This is how telephone scammers want to get your money - warning from the consumer advice center

According to a report by www.chip.de, telephone scammers are active again and are trying to get their victims' data or money using perfidious scams. These fraud attempts are diverse and can occur, among other things, through calls from supposed lawyers. The fraudsters claim to offer permissions such as fee refunds from banks or savings banks in order to obtain sensitive user data. Others use alleged surveys, energy cost advice or changes in life insurance laws as a pretext. There are also scammers who claim to remove the victim from competition company lists and charge a fee of 150 euros for this.

A particularly insidious method used by fraudsters is so-called call ID spoofing. The person being called is shown the real number of the consumer advice center or other reputable organization in order to gain the victim's trust.

The consumer advice center warns that fraudsters go even further and claim that account seizures or legal proceedings are threatened if invoices from competitions are not paid. A senior citizen was threatened that law enforcement officers would come to her if she did not hand over her entire savings to the fraudsters. After the phone calls, the woman paid around 16,000 euros to an alleged messenger from the consumer advice center. There are also cases in which the fraudsters claim that an alleged debt collection claim must be paid immediately in cash and that a “security employee from the consumer advice center” comes to the victim to collect the money. A consumer from Frankfurt am Main lost 5,000 euros.

These scams have a serious impact on the market and consumers. The victims lose a lot of money and are emotionally burdened. This can damage trust in reputable organizations such as consumer advice centers. People may be hesitant to accept real calls from such organizations for fear of being scammed. It is therefore important that consumers are aware of such scams and never give out their sensitive data over the phone.