exclusive Cruel scammers steal dying Belfast gran’s funeral savings

To protect the identity of the victim, who is terminally ill with cancer, we have called her Edna.

“It was really awful. I was up to high doh and was in a real panic,’’ said the 81-year-old.

“I had radiotherapy and would get a pain around my left breast.

“During the phone call, I had to go and take a tablet because the pain was coming back.”

The call on her mobile phone just a few weeks ago was from someone claiming to be from her bank.

“There were three, one after the other, and I cancelled them all. I just pushed delete,’’ she said.

“But the fourth phone call was, ‘You have to answer this call, this is urgent’. 

“The woman told me the card had been used in Liverpool. It was £400 for this and £300 for something else, and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, no’.”

Edna said the scammer sounded English and “very professional”, but it was all part of the act.

“She said, ‘There’s a manager here and we’re dealing with this’. She said, ‘I want you to go into your mobile banking’, which I stupidly did, ‘and I want you to type in this amount’,’’ explained the pensioner.

“So, she got me to put in three amounts of money totalling almost £3,000 to the ‘manager’ and assured me that it would go straight back into my account.”

The phone call lasted an hour, and all that was left in Edna’s bank account by the end of it was £2.50. “My mobile was running out of charge. She said, ‘Go and plug your phone in while I talk you through this. This is important. You don’t want any more money taken’. All the time, she was the one taking my money,” she said.

“By the end of the conversation, I was totally wiped out.”

But something told Edna to contact her bank.

“I felt so stupid and silly. I was in tears. I know they target people my age because we are trusting,” she said. 

“In my time, you were brought up to trust people. Now you can’t believe people can be so rotten.

“The man at bank said it had happened to an awful lot of people and these people are getting better at what they do.”

The money callously stolen from Edna had been set aside.

She explained: “I don’t know how much longer I have on earth. I have often said to my boys [sons] over the years, ‘There is no insurance to bury me, but there is money in my bank to bury me’.”

“It has been a harsh and very expensive lesson. When you think of the things going on in the world at the moment... and they [scammers] can do that to people. It’s awful.”

Scamming is big business and on the rise. In the last year alone, people here lost more than £4.5m.

Senior policeman Gerard Pollock said what happened to Edna was “nothing short of appalling”, but he wasn’t surprised by the tactic of piling on the pressure.

“It always comes with an element of urgency to do something immediately,” Superintendent Pollock added.

“We have all been in those time-pressured situations where some of our rational thinking goes out the window — I completely understand how that can happen.

“But it’s not something any reputable bank or building society would ever ask their customers to do, and if you get a call like that, you should put the phone down.”

Sunday Life contacted Edna’s bank Santander to explain the full story.

As well as words of support, there was some good news: the bank has now put the lost money back in her account.

“I couldn’t believe it — and it’s all because of Sunday Life,’’ said a thrilled Edna.

sharon.oneill@sundaylife.co.uk