The call was unexpected but it brought good news: Bruce Stanwyck* was told that the monthly payments for his O2 phone contract would be reduced from £19 to £12 if he switched to a new deal.
Stanwyck, a pensioner, accepted the offer there and then. That was the start of an elaborate scam that nearly cost him his savings.
The day after the call, Stanwyck received a message from O2 confirming dispatch of a £1,000 iPhone 16 Pro Max handset. Perplexed, he called O2 to remonstrate. He told the company that a new handset had not been mentioned as part of the deal, and he didn’t want it. Nonetheless, the phone was delivered two days later. Stanwyck called O2 to reject it and was told he would be sent a prepaid bag to return it in.
The next morning there was a knock on the door, and Stanwyck handed over the unopened box to the caller, who said he was a courier sent by O2.
“I didn’t think about the fact that I had not been given a receipt until later, and that did worry me,” he says. Three days later, the promised returns bag arrived from O2. Alarmed, Stanwyck called customer services and says he was assured the handset had been received.
What happened next threatened his good name and his savings. A letter from O2 informed him that it was terminating his contract and referring him to its fraud department. It told him to pay £1,072 within 14 days. It transpired the phone had vanished – the courier was nothing to do with O2.
“Now I am classed as a thief and owe money I don’t have for a phone that I never wanted and have not got,” he says. “I can’t work out how this has happened or whether someone from O2 is in on it.”
In fact, Stanwyck had fallen victim to a crime that began with a phishing call from a fraudster masquerading as an O2 sales agent.
Criminal gangs call batches of phone numbers stolen from data hacks or bought on the dark web and offer tempting discounts on contracts or devices. They may not know who your mobile provider is – what they do know is that some of the people they call will be customers of the company they are posing as, and may be susceptible to the bogus deal.
A clue to the scam was the quality of the line, which Stanwyck says was crackling, and the poor English of the caller, which he says he struggled to understand.
During the call, the fraudster tricked Stanwyck into disclosing the “one-time authorisation code” (Otac) – also known as one-time password – with which O2 verifies identity when a customer logs in. That allowed the fraudster to order an iPhone on Stanwyck’s O2 account.
The second part of the fraud was the fake courier who arrived to intercept the package before the genuine returns bag arrived. If Stanwyck had not already arranged to return the phone, the “courier” would have tried other means to dupe him into handing it over. Other victims have been told their parcel was sent in error.
O2 confirmed Stanwyck had been a victim of fraud after Guardian Money intervened. It wiped the debt, cancelled the credit agreement the criminals had signed him up to and closed its fraud case.
“We always aim to take swift action whenever fraud is reported to us, and we apologise that in this case it took longer than it should have done,” says a spokesperson. “We urge customers to be vigilant if they receive a call out of the blue from someone claiming to be from O2, and remember that if a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
On its website, O2 has published a detailed warning to customers about these scams.
Marina Gibbs, the policy director for networks and communications at the telecoms regulator Ofcom, says: “Customers endure a barrage of scam calls, and when people get caught out, the consequences can be devastating. The work we’ve collectively already done has led to 1m calls a day being blocked, but we’re always looking for new ways to shore up our defences in the fight against fraud.”
* Name has been changed
How to avoid being scammed
• Always beware cold calls offering eye-catching deals, especially if you are being pressed into signing up immediately.
• Companies will never under any circumstances ask for an Otac. If you are asked for one, hang up.
• Companies will never ask you to disregard security warnings from your bank or any other service provider.
• Beware calls and texts that begin with an impersonal greeting, ask for your bank details or passwords, prompt you to click a link or demand immediate payment.
• Mobile phone providers will always provide a prepaid envelope for device returns, and it will always be to the address of their returns centres.
• If you are suspicious of a caller, end the call and ring your phone company. Wait a few minutes so that the line to the scammer is not still open when you dial.
• Report a suspicious call or message that purports to be from your phone company to your service provider.
