Groombridge man scammed by fake O2 caller warns of fraud

An 84-year-old man has warned of the dangers of sophisticated online fraud after being scammed.

Chris Messer, from Groombridge, East Sussex, was scammed by a fake O2 caller after inquiring about a phone upgrade.

He was sent another phone, which he said was used by the fraudsters and charged to his account.

O2 said they have held the charges associated with the account and warned customers about being offered deals which seem "too good to be true".

Mr Messer received a "considerably higher" bill from O2 due to the scam.

"What these people had done, these scammers, they got the phone, they added it to my account," he said.

"So I've now got two phones in my account. One very expensive one - which they'd been using - and my normal one."

After speaking with O2, Mr Messer said he "could not believe" he had been scammed.

"You feel incredibly stupid that you've been conned," he said.

"You can't get it out of your mind. Where did I go wrong? What's going to happen next?".

A spokesperson for O2 said: "If you receive a call offering a deal which sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

"Our agents will never call you to ask for your one-time passcode over the phone so never share it with an unexpected caller, no matter how legitimate they seem."

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