'I should know better': tech expert lost £70,000 in one simple phone call

Tom Honeyands realised he had been defrauded out of £70,000 while on a work trip to Tokyo. The tech reviewer behind The Tech Chap, who has 1.63 million subscribers, says he was furious and embarrassed and wondered whether details shown in his social media videos helped the fraudsters.

He received a call from someone claiming to be from Lloyds bank who asked if he had made a recent transaction in Singapore. When he said no, the caller said his account had been compromised and that security details needed to be reset. Jet-lagged and at a noisy dinner, he answered a number of questions about his personal details and later suspected the fraudsters had stitched together a profile from his videos.

The caller said payments needed to be cancelled and that codes would be sent to verify those cancellations, but the codes were actually verifications for new payees. Honeyands made 12 verifications over a few hours, which allowed the criminals to make payments totalling £70,000.

Japan, Tokyo

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