A number of Carlow and Kilkenny people have been scammed out of thousands of Euro in the last couple of weeks.
In one reported this week to Carlow Gardaí, a man lost nearly €2,000 as Crime Prevention Officer Peter McConnon’s told KCLR News “It came from a phone call purporting to be from the Department of Social Protection, the person was asked to download an app, install an app to monitor his phone, he did that and transferred a substantial amount of money in a number of transactions but within minutes the money was taken out of the account”.
While a woman in Kilkenny was conned out of thousands after clicking on a link in a text message saying there’d been suspicious activity on her Bank Of Ireland account.
It seemed to bring her to an online banking page where she entered her details.
Sgt McConnon says she’s not the only one taken in, noting “It’s running into thousands, you know, that’s the reality of it at the minute and again these scammers are sending out hundreds of thousands of messages in different forms per day to catch two or three people, that’s the reality of it and if you’re caught you’re caught, the whole investigation of these is difficult enough, quite often the perpetrator is at the far side of the world”.
And he adds we all need to be on our guard at all times, saying “Every day now we are getting reports in An Garda Siochana, right throughout the country, not just Kilkenny Carlow obviously in relation to various scams and people actually getting caught so again the advice has to be to people that they just need to be suspicious of every email, text message or phone call”.
