Police warning after hoax calls trying to get bank details - The Leamington Observer

Police warning after hoax calls trying to get bank details

Leamington Editorial 23rd Jun, 2016 Updated: 28th Oct, 2016   0

POLICE are urging people to be alert to potential hoax calls.

People claiming to be employees from either BT or TalkTalk tried to obtain back details of Harbury residents by telling them they had a virus on their computer or they were due a refund.

A woman in her 80s received a call purportedly from a Talk-Talk employee, advising her to download software and share personal information.

Another hoax Talk-Talk employee accessed a victim’s laptop by claiming the victim was owed £200. The offenders tried to take money from the victim’s bank account; however the bank blocked the money transfer.




Under the guise of a BT employee, another con artist accessed a victim’s laptop as they claimed the victim had been hacked and requested they transfer £750 to help ambush the hackers. The victim realised the report was false and contacted the police.

TalkTalk have since said they will never ask for bank details to process a refund and when someone is due a refund, they would only be able to process this if the bank details are already registered on their systems.


The company maintain they will not advise people to download software onto their computer unless they have previously contacted TalkTalk, discussed and agreed a call back for this purpose.

And Talk Talk insist they will only ever ask for two digits from a secure password and never request the full password.

Police are now warning the scammers could make repeated attempts to gain access to computers by asking potential victims to input codes to target ‘infected’ files, or may request account details.

Officers advise people not to allow anyone remote access to your computer or divulge passwords or pin numbers.

They also recommend immediately hanging up the phone if someone realises the call is uninvited.

Potential victims are urged to contact the company who the caller claims to be from and then contact police on 101.

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