Scammer pretended to be a Monzo worker to plunder a woman’s £6,000 savings

A young professional was scammed out of her life savings of £6,500 after ‘well-educated’ scammers pretended to work for her bank.

Linjing Peng, a 31-year-old designer who lives in north London, spent hours on the phone with a scammer posing as a member of Monzo’s fraud and security team claiming he wanted to help her evade a ‘group of hackers’.

Peng was told ‘unauthorised payments’ were found on her account – which turned out to be true, so she trusted the callers.

‘Terrified’, Peng followed the instructions to ‘act quickly’ and handed over her bank cards to a courier which arrived by car to her workplace under the pretext that they were required as evidence to arrest the hackers.

After being bombarded with alleged ‘security questions’, she was tricked into taking out an overdraft and revealing her Pin before the scammer hung up the phone and cleared her account.

Peng reported the incident to police and launched a GoFundMe to recoup some of her £6,530 loss – but she remains traumatised by the heist.

Peng said: ‘I think it actually gave me PTSD because I had nightmares for three days in a row, every night. It’s starting to get better, but the first week was really tough. He had a very well-educated, British accent – like someone you hear on the news.

‘He was very gentle and polite, saying things like ‘I appreciate your concern, we are here to help’.’

The scammer told Peng they had found a group of hackers operating around Liverpool and were working with police to stop them.

After Peng heard the ‘scammers’ had access to her social media accounts – and might have access to ‘other banking apps’, she panicked.

‘They asked me to confirm my balance in my current and savings accounts,’ Peng explained.

Linjing had around £300 in her Monzo accounts and £3,500 in her Lloyds savings account.

After reaching her studio, the scammer stayed on the phone while Linjing proceeded to change all of her passwords – while asking her further questions about her cards.

He then asked whether she wished to press charges and was willing to provide evidence. She readily agreed.

‘He said you will need to submit all your cards as evidence – that’s the physical evidence we need to prosecute them,’ Peng said.

After pretending to speak with his supervisor, the scammer explained they would pay for a courier to collect the cards. A car pulled up outside the studio a few minutes later and she handed over her bank cards.

The scammer then encouraged Peng to transfer any savings to her Monzo account, claiming it was ‘safer’ than being in an ‘internet bank’.

He then created a sense of urgency, warning Peng the hackers were attempting to take out a £20,000 loan.

The only way to stop them, the scammer said, was for Peng to cancel the application herself. But not knowing how the banking system worked, she said it ‘made sense’, and did so.

The scammer managed to trick her into actually applying for a £20,000 loan and £500 overdraft. Fortunately, the former was refused, but this has now damaged Peng’s credit score.

She eventually gave her pin, and even received a text message with a verification number that looked ‘exactly like the ones’ from Monzo.

He then asked Linjing to delete and re-install the Monzo app which he claimed had been updated.

By the time she logged back in, her accounts had been cleared and her overdraft maxed out. She tried calling back but received no answer.

She later learned her funds had been withdrawn or spent at Westfield in Stratford, east London, including £3,000 at an Apple store.

Peng reported the fraud to the police and launched a fundraiser on GoFundMe to help recoup her loses, which has so far received £850 in donations.

Last year, Monzo launched a ‘call status’ tool that lets customers verify whether Monzo is phoning them or if fraudsters are trying to scam them.

If the customer’s call status shows that Monzo is not on the phone, they are told to hang up straight away.

A Lloyds spokesperson said: ‘We have a great deal of sympathy for Ms Peng as the victim of an impersonation scam. As no money was lost directly to fraudsters from her Lloyds account, we have advised she will need to contact Monzo to raise the scam claim.’

In a statement Monzo told Metro: ‘We’re sorry this happened to our customer and can imagine how distressing it must have been. We are currently speaking to them to get the details here so we can investigate this case thoroughly. 

‘We are committed to fighting fraud at the source and have invested heavily in cutting edge technology such as our call status tool which lets customers know in the app if they’re really talking to Monzo. We urge all customers to remain vigilant and end the conversation if something doesn’t feel right.’

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