AN elderly man was scammed of $4800 by a conman falsely claiming to be an Optus representative, 11am, Friday 26 May.
The victim, a resident of a retirement village in McLeod Rd, Patterson Lakes, received a phone call from a man possibly with a Canadian accent claiming he was from Optus and that the company had mistakenly paid $2500 into his account.
The victim was instructed to buy that amount of Apple iTunes vouchers from the Patterson Lakes Coles and Woolworths stores, which he did. The victim was then told to scan the rear of the vouchers, showing the bar code and security code number.
The victim was then instructed to download an app on his computer called TeamViewer – which allowed the offenders to gain access to his computer and obtain details of the vouchers.
The scam continued over two days during which the victim was told to buy more iTunes vouchers in the same way, eventually buying forty-eight $100 vouchers.
The offender left a false mobile number as his point of contact. An Apple store employee told police this type of scam was “becoming very common”.
Once the security code on the back of the card is revealed the voucher is spent.
First published in the Chelsea Mordialloc Mentone News – 7 June 2017