Experts say that criminals will launch a wave of ‘little but often’ scams – where they try to make a high number of attempts to extract relatively small sums from shoppers searching for Christmas deals.
The festive-sales days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday – when shops and online retailers slash prices – are particularly likely to be seized on by fraudsters as thousands of shoppers hunt for offers.
Chief Inspector Chris Beechey, chairman of the Jersey Fraud Prevention Forum, is asking everyone to keep reporting scams to the police and the forum in the coming weeks, with 52 reports already made in 2021.
The forum is distributing awareness-raising leaflets to every household next week.
Mr Beechey said the issue was ‘not going away’ and extra vigilance was required in the run-up to the festive season, which is a time when people ‘can let their guard down’.
He said: ‘When everyone is looking to spend money coming up to Christmas or Black Friday, it is a gold mine for fraudsters and scammers. We need to be extra-vigilant at this time of year, I’m afraid.
‘They will be trying “little and often” frauds where they try to extract relatively small amounts of money from as many people as possible because they will be looking to spend and find good deals.
‘They will try to pressure them by telling them that they need to urgently deal with something, they will make offers which are too good to be true or they might say they have items on offer for a very limited period.
‘We would advise people against talking to cold-callers and to be wary of anything which is “too good to be true”. Fraudsters will try to take them away from being in control of situation, like taking them to a different [internet] location and putting malware on their computer. People must not let them do this.’
Mr Beechey said that the most common means of communication for frauds were phone calls, email and text messages.
He added: ‘Compared to last year, we have seen a slight decrease in the amount of fraud and scams being reported to the police.
‘However, this has been the second-biggest monetary loss the Island has seen in the past five years.
‘We want to encourage Islanders to speak out against this crime, and to know the forum is here to protect, advise and help against these fraudsters. These criminals are always adapting the way they target their victims, which is why we need to remain vigilant.
‘The forum has had reports from Islanders of hackers trying to gain remote access to their computers, as well as reports of postal scam texts and romance fraud via Facebook. We encourage Islanders to challenge any calls or requests they suspect may not be legitimate and to report them.’
Last month, the JEP reported that an elderly Islander had been tricked out of thousands of pounds by a fraudster who pretended to work for Amazon Prime. Eric Bastiman was conned into giving out his bank details, which allowed the scammer to remove £18,000 from his account.
Any suspicions of fraud can be reported to the forum, while any money loss should be report to the relevant bank and the police on 612612.
