Do they think we're stupid?

I do not think people are stupid that get taken in by these scams. Some people are just too trusting.

Ive narrowly escaped a few scams but I have a very suspicious mind. People do not GET trust from me. They EARN it over years.

I was watching one TV show where some women had been conned out of thousands of pounds by "boyfriends" posing as army officers, airline pilots, and other glamerous jobs. I did once have an online friend I chatted to but when he began telling me how he had big medical bills to pay for his mom and his business was in trouble it was an immediate red flag. Then he came out and asked if I would lend him $50000. I told him I would have to speak to my accountant. My nephew did a reverse image search which led to a scam site with the picture he was using. I immediately blocked his email address and IP address at server level.

When we arefairly confident online and knowledgeable about matters financial, it is easy to be dismissive of others, although, I struggle to understand why people are conned by romance frauds, they are so blatant.

You only have to listen to You & Yours and Money Box on BBC R4 or read the personal finance pages in the papers, to realise how clever some of these scams are, especially the cold call ones claiming to come from banks and insurers or the police and when people's understanding of finance is minimal and their under standing of technology is even less, it is possible to see how they get drawn in and scammed.

I read an article on just this scam the other day. An older couple had been scammed out of £20,000. They did get it back, as the scammers were somehow mimicking their bank, but others may not be so lucky.

I had a message from Yodel yesterday as apparently there was a parcel they had been unable to deliver.
I pressed the link to the website out of interest and it was very good.

We got a phone call at 12 at night supposedly from our bank wanting all kinds of information as someone was supposedly trying to scam us.
Luckily DH did not fall for it.
A few days later I was talking on the phone to a relative and she said very elderly neighbours of theirs had got the same scam ,they do not have a computer so set the alarm and were down at the bank as it opened only to be told it was a scam. The bank actually knew the number used and had a list of people who had been hit.

there was another so sad one on money box on saturday.
77 year old, retired RAF officer, no dementia, had lost his home and all savings, over 800K.
as he spoke about it he broke down.
he had wanted to buy a house for his son, and got lured into supposed bitcoin trading.
it's easy to feel that we would never fall for it.
he probably thought so too, before it happened to him.