If you are rung up by the police or the Fraud Squad you assume that they are there to protect you but yesterday this was not the case for a Surlingham pensioner!

The pensioner was rung up yesterday by the Nat West Fraud Team asking her if I she had transferred money from her savings account of £4,000 in Edinburgh that morning. As she had been at home she said ‘No’ she was then told that this anomaly had been picked up by ‘the team’.

Having got her to feel grateful to ‘The Team’ for picking this up so quickly she followed their advice to amend the situation! She was asked to use her bank card reader to reset the account. She gave out no passcodes and felt that she was safe and her money would be returned.

She was sent an email from Nat West thanking her for re setting her account and giving her a code to put in when she next logged in. She was told that all of her money was safely back in both savings accounts and the account could now not be used by anyone but herself and a new Visa card would be in the post.

However, when she went on line later that evening she found that all of her accounts had been cleared, savings and current accounts. On speaking to the bank they had no record of anyone ringing her and a further 2 hours in a local bank proved that as she was at fault in not keeping her accounts safe through using the card reader and giving ‘The Team’ information which allowed them to empty her accounts.

It is therefore unlikely that she will get any money back. She is now penniless.

As she says