I Was Nearly Scammed Out of £1,000 – Please Don’t Ignore These Red Flags

In this episode, I’m sharing something that feels a little embarrassing… but important.

This week, I came within one click of losing £1,000 to a very convincing online scam. As someone who runs online businesses and considers herself fairly tech-savvy, I genuinely didn’t expect to get caught this close.

From a fake email and live chat, to a follow-up phone call from overseas, the whole experience was sophisticated, familiar, and almost believable. It was only at the final moment — when asked to approve a £1,000 payment to a stranger — that my gut instinct finally kicked in.

In this episode, I talk about:

• How the scam unfolded step-by-step
• The subtle red flags I nearly ignored
• Why even confident, capable women can be vulnerable online
• What I did immediately to protect myself
• How to support elderly relatives who may be at greater risk
• Practical tips to spot suspicious emails and activity

If this episode stops just one person from making a costly mistake, it will be worth sharing — even if I do feel like a bit of a “plonky head.”

Please pass this episode on to anyone who might benefit. Awareness is powerful.

Lots of love,
 Beth x

Transcript

0:00

Hi, and welcome to another podcast episode. Before we dive into the podcast, I just want to say that I hope the sound on this is okay. It's quite noisy. In our house tonight, we call my husband Baher Crasher and Smasher. For a very good reason and there is a little bit of bashing and crashing and quite possibly smashing going on, and my youngest is having a shower at the moment with very loud music playing. So if you get the family vibe, sorry, I hope it's okay for you, but it's just the way life is this evening. Anyway, this podcast episode is about how I was nearly scammed out of a thousand pounds yesterday. And in some ways it's the last thing I want to share because I feel a real Plonky head. Plonky head is a term that my eldest coined when she was probably about seven or eight. It is now a family term for when you feel a bit stupid. I mean, you can be a Plonky head, you can feel a Plonky head. There's Plonky head can be used in lots of different ways, but I do feel a bit of a Plonky head because I feel that I should have known better, and it's for that very reason that I think it's something worth sharing because. You might be at the stage in life where you are caring for elderly relatives, and you might feel that they're a little bit vulnerable online, and this could be something that you are just aware of, firstly for yourself, but also for them as well. Because if it can happen or almost happen to someone like me who's quite tech savvy, who's used to the online world, who's used to running online businesses, then. I think there's the potential it could happen to anyone. Like I say, I do feel a bit of ay head about it, but I'm going to talk you through what happened so that if you come across this situation in the future. Alarm bells may well ring with you and you won't get as close as I did to making what could have turned out to have been a very expensive mistake. So let me rewind a little bit to a few days ago when I received an email from Etsy and I have an Etsy store called the Beth Rum Studio. I received an email from Etsy to say that somebody had bought a product from me and that they were holding the funds until I updated my banking details. And that's something that I've come across before I've got an Amazon business. Occasionally you need to change the banking details. Sometimes if the business is based in America and we are in the uk, our cards can be a little bit picky. And I just thought, okay, fair enough. So they're no longer accepting domestic UK bank accounts. They want more of an international bank account. Like I said, I've come across it before and I. Didn't think that much of it. The email looked very genuine. It had got the name of my Etsy store in it. It had got the right price for the product. It detailed the product, so on and so forth. So I quickly tried to do this a few days ago. It was one morning early before I was going out for a run, and I tried to enter my bank details and they weren't accepted, and that was fine. I didn't have time to deal with it. Then a message popped up from customer service to say, really, you need a Relu account? We don't accept this particular. Bank card that you are trying to register, and I thought, okay, I think I've got a Revolut card somewhere, but I'll leave it for another day. Anyway, I had a little bit more time yesterday, so I went back into it and started the verification process again. I started by using an international card that I'd got and that was rejected, and they said, you need a revolut count. And I said. I haven't got one of those, even though I found out that I had, but I couldn't quite figure out how it worked. And they said, don't worry. We'll accept this other international account that you are trying to register. And I thought, okay, well that's quite helpful. There were customer services available to me. There was a live chat. The girl was talking me through what I needed to do. Her name was Emma, which I think made. Chosen because they probably went on to chat GPT and thought, okay, we've got a middle-aged woman from the uk. On the end of this chat, trying to verify her bank account, what's the name she will identify with as being trustworthy. So Emma guided me through the process. I say Emma in inverted comm. I've had to go through this process before, so it didn't seem that strange in terms of the fact that it was. Log into your bank account and the box came up on the screen for me to enter my email address and my password with my international bank account, which I did. It then came up and said, you need to enter the balance in your bank. The bank want additional verification and additional information, and I thought, okay, that's a bit odd, but. You know, maybe it's just one of those things. There's not a lot they can do with this information, so I entered that. I had to give them my full name. I had to give them my date of birth. I know this is probably sounding like I'm really stupid, but I've had to do these verification things many times with Amazon, with all the tech platforms that I've used over the years. And at that point there was nothing that was really ringing any major alarm bells other than the fact that I had. Had to enter the bank account balance, which was a bit different to usual. The other thing that I noticed was in the chat, the live chat, where they were monitoring what was happening and telling me to go to the next stage was that there was an incorrect spelling of the word revolut, and I thought, Hmm, that's interesting, but maybe it's just one of those things, they haven't quite spelled it properly. An alarm bell should have rung at that. Anyway, they were guiding me through the process and then it said, go to your phone to approve this transaction. And what came up on my phone in my banking app, so I had to go to my banking app on my phone to approve the transaction was a transaction for a thousand pounds to somebody with a woman's name. So it wasn't Etsy, it wasn't. In any way link to Etsy. It wasn't etsy.com or etsy.co.uk. It was a woman's name. And at that point I said, I'm not happy doing this. This is a thousand pounds. That is going to be sent to somebody with an individual name. And they tried to reassure me and say, don't worry, no man's going to be taken. It's, it is just a test transaction. At which point I closed the entire window down. And thought, absolutely no way am I going to approve a transaction for a thousand pounds to a woman's name that I didn't recognize. So I left it and thought, Hmm, I'm gonna get in touch with Etsy on Monday. I have a nasty feeling that this is a scam. The next thing that happened was that I received a telephone call from Canada. It came up on my screen as being from Ontario, I think it was, and. The only reason that I answered the telephone call was because my son is currently in Canada, and although he's not in that area, actually no, I think it was Quebec. I just thought there could be a problem here. It might be somebody trying to get a hold of me on his behalf. Maybe it's rerouted somehow. It's not a risk I can take. So anyway, I answered the call and there was this guy on the other end saying, oh, I'm ringing from Etsy. I noticed you've abandoned the transaction. Just wanted to see if there's any reason why and I'd like you to continue with it. And I just said to him, I don't trust you. I think it's a scam. And he said, no, no, no. It's absolutely not a scam. This is perfectly normal. This is what happens. No money will be taken. He tried to persuade me a few times and I said, look, I'm going to speak with Etsy on Monday morning. I will message the help center. I will find out what they say about it, so there's no point continuing the conversation. Once I'd established it wasn't my son on the end of the phone, then I really wasn't that interested in speaking to them anymore. So that was the end of the phone call and I thought, okay, so I know I haven't paid them any money, but they do have my personal details and I am a little bit concerned about this. So the next thing that happened was I received an email from. My bank saying, have you requested a change of telephone number on your bank account? Which I hadn't, and I thought, alright, these people are really trying to change my details so that if they get a call from the bank, they can say yes, that's absolutely fine. The payment is verified. Please send it. So what I did apart from mildly thinking, oh my golly, this is really not what I want to be happening right now, and bear in mind that I was hacked on Facebook a few years ago, which was a really, really horrible experience. It started to trigger a little bit of panic in me. At the time. I was trying to make some healthy flapjack for my daughter who'd asked for it. So I was kind of up to my elbows in a combination of oats and nuts and seeds. Some raisins and some peanut butter and some coconut oil, and I was thinking, oh golly, okay, this is really not what I need on a Saturday afternoon. But nevertheless, so what I did next was I went into the banking app and I found out how to contact them if I was concerned that there was some kind of fraud going on. And they were brilliant. So I'm sure this is probably true of all banking apps, but it's worth knowing because sometimes. You can go into a bit of a panic and think, what do I do now? Do I need to call the police? What do I do? I need to speak to somebody who knows about these things. So I went into the banking app and found the section that said, if you think that there's been some fraud on your account, or someone's trying to defraud you, ring this number. So I rang the number and got a call callback immediately from this really nice guy. I told him what had happened. He said, okay, the fraud team will be in touch with you. We will send you an email and I can't remember what they said. The heading would be something like post-call follow up, and I said, I'm really scared that I might get an email and I give information away that I shouldn't. And he was very reassuring and said It will have this heading on it. Only respond to it if it has this particular heading. Whilst I was on the phone, he checked my account, he confirmed that the payment hadn't gone out. He confirmed that the account was secure. They said they would shut the account down. From external payments being made for the next couple of days, internal payments was gonna be fine, external payments wouldn't go out, and they then sent me a form via email for me to fill in of exactly what had happened. So when the form arrived. They asked me to tick the boxes to which transaction I was disputing, but I wasn't actually disputing a transaction because I didn't verify the payment. But in the email it said, just tell us the details below and we will submit these to the fraud team, which is what I did. I'm now waiting to hear back from them, and I woke up this morning and thought, golly, that was so close. It would've just been one click of a button in my banking app and a thousand pounds would've been taken. It may have been the case that I might have been able to recover it possibly, but who knows, maybe not. What I was able to submit to the fraud team at my bank was the telephone number of the incoming call from Canada, so they have that. I was also able to submit the. Email that I'd received a few days ago, which had initially asked me to update my bank details in Etsy. And the other thing that I was able to submit was I took a screenshot of the payment that I had to authorize and the woman's name that was showing on there. So they've now got those three pieces of information, which I need to see whether I ought to pass onto the police as well, although I would imagine that they probably won't be particularly interested in it, and that's fine. They've probably got bigger fish to fry than this, but it. Was another wake up call, I suppose. I am always really careful. My husband said to me, were you distracted at the time? Only because he said he'd almost done something similar when he was distracted. And I said, no. I knew exactly what I was doing, but I think the point was. What they were talking me through was so familiar to what I'd done before, other than a couple of things, which started to ring alarm bells that I didn't necessarily think it was anything particularly out of the ordinary. I think it's because I'm used to dealing with tech platforms in the state to having the issues with UK bank accounts, to needing an international bank account, all that kind of thing, to getting calls from overseas. It didn't really ring any bells, but I think what it has taught me is if ever there's anything I see, like the spelling mistake, like the fact that they wanted the, balance on the bank account to pause and just listen to my gut more. I think as women, I do talk about this as well in some of the podcast episodes, we're quite good at ignoring our gut instinct or not very good at listening to our gut instinct. And instead, I was thinking, there's a lady here called Emma. Yeah, that was very clever of them. I've been through this process before. She's here kind of holding my hand. She's reassuring me being the good girl that I am. I want to get this sorted as soon as possible. It was only when I got to that very last stage of being about to approve the payment in my banking app for 1000 pounds to someone else with a name that didn't relate to Etsy at all, that I just thought, no, I'm not doing this. But it is. Easy to do these things to not realize at the time what's going on and then to feel immensely silly afterwards. And like I say, I feel immensely silly now and it didn't even get that far, or it didn't get as far as me making the payment. And I just think about some of those poor women that end up. Again, in speech mass, falling in love with somebody abroad and transferring all their money and all that kind of thing, it must just be absolutely devastating for them. It must be heartbreaking, and I am embarrassed about it. I'm so embarrassed about it, but at the same time, I thought, you know, it's probably really important to talk about it as well because. As I mentioned, if you've got elderly relatives, if you are caring for anyone, anyone who does have a phone, a smartphone, or an iPad or a laptop, it, it is so easy for them to be targeted. So although I'm not gonna give my mom the full details of what's happened because she would be worried for me, I am going to reinforce to her that if she has any queries, and she's very good at coming to me with tech issues, even about little things. So she probably would with this. Just to double check, just to come to us, just to assume that there is something a little bit amiss at play. So whilst, like I say, I don't want to alarm anyone, I don't want to scare anyone. I do think that hearing stories like this is just a good reminder that we are quite vulnerable online and that these people out there are very clever. I think the cleverest thing they did was use the name Emma to chat to me because the name that came up on the screen of who the payment was meant to go to was nothing like Emma. It was a completely different name that I wouldn't have had as much connection with. I think they would. Really clever in making out. There was an Emma chatting to me when clearly there wasn't, and even, you know, even the guts to make the call, the follow-up call to check that I was okay and why'd I abandoned the payment. And it was, I mean, golly, you know, these people have got some guts to do things like that. So. Anyhow. Like I say, I don't want to alarm you, but I just wanted to put it back on your radar to be super careful when you're online, to make sure that you don't get as close to anything as I did, and that if you do, to reach out, tell someone, go through your banking app, find the people to get hold of so that the payment can be canceled so it can be shut down so that it can be recovered so that the appropriate action can be taken because there is protection out there. So although you might feel a bit ashamed and a bit embarrassed, don't just hide away and think, I'm gonna sack that one up and deal with it. Do take steps to protect yourself even if you have done something that you just can't believe you've done and think, oh my goodness, what was I doing? Because. It's really easy. These people are clever. They've got great technology. The one thing that I did realize actually as well before I go when I went into my inbox to look at this email again, allegedly from Etsy, was that it came from a completely different email address in isolation. I wouldn't have realized that. It stuck out like a sore thumb and clearly wasn't from Etsy, but when I could see the Etsy emails on this one as well, that showed up, it's like, okay, that's a very different email address. So that's something to to check as well, is just if you get an email from someone that you're not sure whether it's genuine or not, just go to the search bar at the top of your inbox and type in the word for me it was Etsy, but it could be, you know, marks and Spencer's. It could be British Gas, it could be your. Email service provider or your mobile telephone provider, just type that in to the search bar and see what other ones come up and whether they all share the same email address, because that should give you a clue as well. I hope you found this helpful. I'm sorry it's not a really positive episode, but hopefully something positive comes from it and I should look forward to seeing you again next week if you think that. Anyone you know near to you or far from you could benefit from this episode. I'm slightly hesitant to say, please pass it on because I do feel very silly. But no, do please pass it on because if it stops them from getting into a sticky situation, then I am all about that. Even if in the process, as I say, I feel right, clunky head. Okay, lots of love to you and have a fabulous week ahead. I will see you again next week. Lots of love, and bye for now.