Guildford woman conned out of hundreds of pounds in Facebook Messenger scam
Fraudsters posed as someone known to her and her family.
A Guildford woman who was the victim of a scam via Facebook messenger has issued a warning to try and help others avoid the same fate.
Debbie says she was conned out of hundreds of pounds after fraudsters took over the account of someone known to her and her family.
Her story comes following what Surrey Police have called a "surge in reports of people receiving fraudulent messages" relating to the same scam.
Like in the example given by officers, Debbie says she got a message that appeared to be from someone she knew.
They claimed they were having a problem with their Paypal account after selling a camera on Ebay and asked her to receive money into her own Paypal account and transfer it.
However, once the transfer was done the fraudsters reversed the original transaction and took back the money they had sent to her account too.
Debbie says it was the seeming familiarity that didn't raise suspicion, adding: “They jumped on the conversation about my daughter, that’s why I believed it.
“When that £600 dropped I thought that’s quite a lot of money for a camera, but I was due to leave to go to work within 20 minutes.
“So stupidly now, when I look back, I did transfer the money out, but hindsight’s clearly a wonderful thing.
“I do feel cross with myself that I was stupid enough to believe it in the first place, but people do and I’m a very giving person, a very kind person and I just feel that I’ve been taken advantage of in that context.”
Surrey Police say you shouldn't accept or transfer any cash unless you've spoken to the person by another means first to make sure it's really them.