Sanitised case 22
The MLRO of a local Money Services Business submitted a SAR concerning an 80 year old local resident (Mr. P) who had sent two £1,500.00 money orders to the same individual in Canada. The disclosed was made due to an awareness that Canada was well known as centre for lottery scams and that money orders were favoured.
Inquiries by JFCU revealed that the local resident had been cold called by a female from Canada and invited to enter a “no win no fee” lottery. Some weeks later Mr. P was notified by the same female that he had won a share of £2 million prize and that all he had to do was to send her the £3,000.00 to cover the price of the ticket. When Mr. P queried that he had not seen the winning ticket he was passed to the female’s supervisor who convinced him that all was in order.
Mr. P was advised that he had been the victim of a scam and it transpired that he had previously lost £10,000.00 in similar circumstances. He was warned to be aware of future attempts.
Several months later, Mr. P sent £28,000.00 to the account in Taiwan. Fortunately his bank picked up on the transaction and managed to recall the funds. However when the client was advised, he was adamant that the payment should be made and threatened to sue the bank for failing to carry out his instruction.
Inquiries by JFCU confirmed that this was a further lottery scam and that Mr. P had previously sent £6,000.00 as a release fee for his multi million $ prize.
Conclusions
Mr P. was clearly a vulnerable victim who had been groomed over many months on the telephone (he did not use the internet) by the scammers to such an extent that he could not see reason.The grooming was so professional that he referred to the female caller as his “guardian angel” as she was going to provide him with enough money to meet his
ailing wife’s considerable medical bills.His details had been circulated to other scammers as he had received huge volumes of mail from all over the world inviting him to invest his money in a variety ofschemes.
Thanks to the rapid intervention of the bank, Mr. P did not loose his £28,000.00 and agreement was reached that all his future financial activity would be handled in conjunction with his bank manager.
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