The young mum lost her savings in the scam (stock image) (Image: Getty)
A woman has shared her sadness and frustration after she and her husband “lost all their savings” after falling for a common telephone scam.
Amelia Mandeville-Marinaro, an and first-time mum, took to her popular channel to share “her mistake” in the hopes other people will learn and not fall victim to phone phishing scams.
Speaking directly to the camera, the 28-year-old began: “Today, we were which meant that we’ve lost our savings which is, you know, scary because I’m on maternity leave but I wanted to do this video so that other people learn from our mistakes.
“I know people are going to be like, ‘why are you so stupid, it’s obvious it’s a scam’ but I think sometimes, in the moments, you don’t realise it and I’m not doing that video to say we weren’t stupid.
“I’m doing this video so other people just don’t make the same mistake.”
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What was the phone scam?
Amelia explained her husband, Pete, received a call from someone with “no caller ID” who told him “someone’s hacked your account, we need to act fast”. Pete then text Amelia to let her know was at risk, but that he was “sorting it” with what he believed to be their bank.
Pete then asked Amelia to send her card details to him, which she did “ without thinking” before stopping and pondering, “surely the bank knows what my card details are?”
Her husband then told her she needed to approve a , which she thought sounded “weird” but Pete explained the bank had told him they needed to move their money to another bank account “so that it’s safe”.
At this stage, “alarm bells” started to ring for Amelia so she checked their bank account online, which said it wasn’t trying to call her. After panicking about this and believing the situation sounded “dodgy”, Pete said this was a deliberate message by their bank for “the person who has access to our account so that they don’t know what’s happening”.
Despite her reservations, Amelia said she “stupidly” approved the payment. Getting emotional, she continued: “Basically, we have just paid someone all of our savings and it was, it was silly, it was stupid of us.”
She had to “take a pause from filming” after getting very upset. She then added: “Basically, to summarise how we fell for this scam; Pete got a call that said that our account was hacked and someone was trying to spend all of our savings.
“Pete followed the steps from the guy, and they seemed to know a lot of details about our account and how much was in our savings so it seemed legit. So Pete followed the steps because the guy said he was gonna move our money into a safe bank account.”
How to avoid falling for a phone or phishing scam
Amelia advised: “Just so everyone knows, a bank would never, ever call you with no caller ID and a bank will never want you to move your money to make it safe.
“On a lot of bank apps, you can go into the ‘help’ section and it will say when your last call was and you know, if we would’ve known that at the time, we would have been able to see that our bank wasn’t calling us.”
Amelia said both she and Pete “feel stupid” but were keen to share their story as they “just don’t want people to make the same mistake and lose their money”.
Scams are becoming more sophisticated and, in some cases, scammers can mimic banking telephone numbers to make it appear as a legitimate call from your bank. If you receive a call, it’s best to hang up and then call the number off the bank of your bank card yourself to be on the safe side.
If you’ve been scammed, guidance from the National Cyber Security Centre website states: “If you’ve lost money or have been hacked as a result of responding to a phishing message, you should report it:
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In England, Wales or Northern Ireland, visit or call 0300 123 2040.
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In Scotland, report to Police Scotland by calling 101.”