'Exercise caution' says garda after man caught out by online search scam

A garda sergeant has issued a warning to the public to be careful when dealing with money online.

Speaking to Patricia Messinger on C103's Cork Today Show, Sergeant John Kelly highlighted how a member of the public had lost money online after ringing a scam number disguised as one for online payment site PayPal.

The guard said that a man had reported the scam to them last Saturday.

"His friend had lodged an amount of money - a three figure amount of money - into his PayPal account," explained Sgt Kelly.

"Now PayPal look for the receiver's verification, which would be sent on. And when some of these didn't send, the man in this question - he Googled PayPal.

"The first number that came up he rang. He provided his bank account details to the person at the end of the call, thinking he had got through to PayPal.

"The amount concerned was then taken from his bank account."

Sgt Kelly said people need to be "so, so careful" as the phone number that had appeared in the online search was for a scammer, and not PayPal.

"In this case, the money left his account and that's it," said Sgt Kelly.

The problem is he has no comeback in that he provided the bank account details and the verification was on the other end of the line.

The sergeant said scams are getting "very clever" and the amounts being lost to them are getting bigger.

"It seems now that you have a targeted scam and you have the opportunist scam," highlighted Sgt Kelly.

"[You have] the fella that will ring you and say 'look, I'm from Microsoft and there's a problem with your computer'. In some cases, people they rang didn't (even) have a computer.

"Then you have the targeted one, whereby the person rings but they seem to have a little amount of information on you already - that you dealt with a particular company or that you have received an invoice for something.

"People have to exercise caution. They still have to have that person-to-person contact."