A Lockerbie woman was conned out of nearly £1,000 in a phone scam.
The 45-year-old victim was tricked into transferring money by a caller claiming to be setting up a refund from Amazon Prime.
They duped the woman into downloading an app to make the transaction and provided an activation code of 998.
But the scammer was in fact setting up an online bank transfer.
The distraught victim realised she had been conned when she went to check if the refund had reached her account and saw that £998 had been taken from it.
She said: “I’m absolutely devastated. I had taken out Amazon Prime by accident and was planning to contact them to cancel it when the call came through.
“I should have clicked when they asked me to download the app. It was only when I checked my account a few minutes later that I realised what had happened. I was in tears.
“The people that did this are absolute scum.”
The woman contacted the Royal Bank of Scotland’s fraud team to report the incident which happened last Friday.
And they have made a request for a return of the money to the HSBC branch where it was sent.
The victim now faces an anxious wait of up to a month to find out if the cash will be paid back.
She said: “I’m not optimistic but hopefully the RBS fraud team got to the other bank before the money could be removed.
“The scammer phoned me again the following day.
“When I confronted them about stealing the money they claimed it was an error and that they would repay the money if I followed their instructions.
“I told them I was not going to fall for that again and they hung up.”
According to Action Fraud, the national fraud and cyber crime reporting centre, the refund scam has seen hundreds of victims across the country lose more than £400,000.
“Instead, contact them directly using a known email or phone number.”
