New identity theft scam left Worthing dog trainer with £25,000 debts

A seemingly innocent email from Millie Clark’s mobile phone provider led the 24-year-old to giving fraudsters access to her accounts, who then created loans and overdrafts in hours in a process known as authorised push payment fraud.

After sharing her experience in a Facebook video viewed more than 90,000 times, Millie eventually had the debts cleared – but not before days of agonising stress.

The East Preston dog walker, who owns Highdown Agility dog training club in Rife Way, Ferring, said: “I’m trying to make an honest living for myself, and it is hard enough having it hit by coronavirus 10 weeks into buying my business, let alone this.

“It was awful; I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

At the start of May, Millie received a phishing email with a link to a fake but convincing O2 website, asking her to update her payment details.

Two weeks later the scammers called her, posing as the fraud prevention team at her bank, HSBC.

Having won her trust by spoofing the team’s official number, the scammers persuaded her to give them security codes and took out a loan and overdraft worth more than £10,000 on her Monzo bank account while they were on the phone.

Claiming a mystery third party was hacking her account, they told her to send the money to a ‘HSBC account’ for safe-keeping – straight into their pockets.

Millie also gave them access to her business account, from which they took £12,000: including £500 raised by her clients to keep her business going through the lockdown, which Millie described as ‘heart-breaking’.

It was only when the real HSBC fraud prevention team called her the next day that Millie realised what had happened.

She said: “The penny dropped and my stomach turned. I burst into tears.”

As HSBC had records of the fraudsters downloading its banking app to phones in Leeds and London before using Millie’s credentials, the bank was able to prove she was a victim of identity theft and cancelled the fraudulent activity, meaning her credit rating would be unaffected.

But Millie said the fraudsters had continued to call her.

Through social media, Millie has heard from others that have avoided the scam thanks to her Facebook post.

She said: “The more I thought about what I had done, the stupider I felt. But to have 999 people telling you you aren’t stupid made me feel better.”

Millie reported the incident to Action Fraud, the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime. But as identity theft is not currently classed as a 'police-recordable crime' under Home Office guidelines, they could only log the issue. Millie said this needed to change.

A spokesperson for Action Fraud said: “As the person reporting had not lost any money, the report was recorded on our system as an information report and will be used by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau for intelligence purposes. In time, further reports might come into Action Fraud that link to this one.”

For more advice about identity theft, visit cifas.org.uk/services/identity-protection.