The Police warn about a new WhatsApp scam aimed at parents with children

The National Police has warned of a new form of fraud, through social networks, through which criminals try to obtain money from their victims extremely quickly.

To achieve this, according to the police complaint, they do so by posing as a child of the victim. At this point, it should be noted that, to select their targets, criminals use social engineering methods with which they find out personal data of their victims. Among them, if they have children or not.

“A new form of fraud has been detected through WhatsApp. They contact women and pretend to be their children to ask them for money urgently in order to deal with an alleged immediate problem,” the police agency indicates on its social networks.

????ATTENTION

Detected a new modality through ?

They contact women and pretend to be their children to request them urgently in order to deal with an alleged immediate problem

Share to avoid future victims

— National Police (@police)

As described by the agents, this method has been detected in the WhatsApp instant messaging application. There, the scammers claim to be one of the victim’s children, who has allegedly been forced to sign up for a new phone line because the regular line has been blocked. Therefore, the phone number from which the message comes will always be unknown.

bank transfer for no reason

By convincing the victim of his identity, the scammer requests the immediate payment of a sum of money (in the example presented by the Police, 2,900 euros) to face an urgent payment. “Could you do me a favor? I have to pay something and I don’t have the card at hand. Could you make a transfer and I’ll pay you back when I have the card at hand?” expresses the scammer in the example collected by the National Police.

With insistence and without giving explanations about where the money will go, the criminal provides the victim with the details of the shipment, such as the IBAN, the name of the recipient or the reference.

With all this, it is up to the victim to obey the offender’s instructions or doubt their veracity and not give in to the scam.