Actress’s stark warning after losing £1K to ‘Royal Mail’ scammers

Emmeline Hartley
Handout

Actress Emmeline Hartley fell victim to scammers who cleared her account of £1,000.

The 28-year-old, who splits her time between Birmingham and Enfield, received a fake Royal Mail text in March.

It was the day before her birthday so she thought nothing of paying the small “settlement” charge, assuming it was for a package she had missed. “I didn’t think much about it,” she said. “The website looked like the Royal Mail and it was only asking for my account number and sort code.”

But the text was not designed to allow fraudsters to drain a bank account. It gives them enough information about a person to convince them their account has been compromised.

Ms Hartley later received a call from someone posing as a Barclays employee who told her the text was a scam.

They then led her through steps on her mobile banking app to transfer her money to a new account. They took £500 from her personal account and the same amount from one set up for her business.

She said: “I had a complete meltdown. It’s a mixture of grief and shame. It’s the emotional blackmail I wasn’t prepared for. This person on the phone acting like you could lose everything and they are your saviour. It makes you panic and act on impulse rather than logically.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in