Beware strangers bearing gifts

We’ve all been taken for ride on our travels.

We’ve bought a wooden bowl in Fiji that seems smaller and shoddier the moment we take it out of the shop. Or we’ve been short-changed by a dodgy moneychanger in South America. We put it down to experience, of being in unfamiliar circumstances. But at home we haven’t got that excuse. And when it happens here it seems somehow worse.

As a Secure Sentinel Customer Service consultant, Judith Hodges has seen and heard about plenty of the scams. So when Mr Kerslake of Waitara rang to say that his wife had lost her credit cards but it was OK because the bank had already rung to say they were cancelling them all, alarm bells started ringing.

‘Banks don’t stop other banks cards,’ Judith told me. ‘That’s what we do!’

Judith became even more concerned when Mr Kerslake told her that the bank had asked him the credit limit on his wife's card.

‘It sounded like a classic case of fraud,’ Judith said. ‘The thief rings up their victim and tells them that they’ve found their purse or wallet. The person is so happy that their cards have been found that they give out information they’d normally be guarded about divulging.’

Judith realized there wasn’t a second to lose and initiated Secure Sentinel’s emergency procedures. She stopped all his wife's cards. She issued a loss report. And she hoped the cards had been cancelled before too much damage was done.

Mr Kerslake rang Judith back two days later. The news was not good. In the time that it had taken him to call Secure Sentinel, the thief had defrauded the Kerslakes of a couple of thousand dollars.

‘Mr Kerslake knew that he had divulged personal information and was liable for the loss,’ said Judith. ‘Mr K was fairly stalwart about this. But my heart went out to him.’

For his part, Mr Kerslake was thankful it wasn’t worse.

‘At least Judith picked up that it was fraud,’ he told me ruefully. ‘I shudder to think how much worse it could have been if she hadn’t acted so quickly.’

I asked Mr Kerslake if he minded sharing his story. He said he hoped that it would act as a cautionary tale to other members, a reminder to make sure that Secure Sentinel’s number was the first you called.

He told me that the worst thing about the whole experience was that he has been a Secure Sentinel member for a number of years.

‘I should have known better,’ he said with a shake of his head.

While you may encounter fraud rarely or not at all, for many people deception is their day job. Did you know that Secure Sentinel provides helpful advice for you to avoid criminals obtaining your personal information and using it for their own benefit? For more information on protecting your personal information call 1800 022 043 or click here.