Angmering family's warning after 81-year-old nan's bank account emptied in "sickening" scam
Doreen Daniel was befriended by a hacker posing as a "financial advisor"
The family of an 81-year-old from Angmering, scammed out of £27,000 are urging for more awareness around online fraud.
Doreen Daniel was targeted by a pretend 'financial advisor', who befriended her before encouraging her to install an app, which allowed him to hack her phone and empty her bank account.
Family say they only noticed something was wrong when Doreen's card was declined during a weekly shop.
Her granddaughter, Jasmine, explained that the scammer had used "sickening" techniques to hide what he was doing: "At that point, we just did a full deep dive through emails and texts, and the scammer had quite cleverly archived all of their communications on WhatsApp, so unless you were really looking for it, you wouldn't have found it."
Hacker controlled Doreen's bank accounts
After uncovering that, the family then found that he'd managed to approve payments from her bank account and invested her money in cryptocurrency.
She adds that Doreen became an easier target after being recently widowed and looking for companionship.
"She thought he was her financial advisor, and he was gonna handle her finances, and he was gonna help her invest in all sorts of things so that she would make money.
"She thought he was gonna put her into her into raffles so that she would had this potential to win £100,000."
Open conversations vital
Reflecting back, as well as urging families to have open conversations with loved ones about finances, Jasmine said there can be physical symptoms to being scammed too: "You've got to look out for the signs that come on the other side, like withdrawal or being out of character, being quieter than usual, being cagier than usual.
" I think a lot of people maybe will recognize those signs, but not know what it's a sign of.
"Even if you've got to go into their devices yourself, try to make sure that there is a high sort of level of security there.
"Also just checking in regularly with people, not even about about scams particularly, but you know, if you know someone who's older and who's vulnerable and who might be quite lonely.
"Unfortunately the door is wide open for a scammer to come along and try and forge a relationship."
Anyone affected by scams can also report it to ActionFraud.