Woman issues warning after she was scammed out of entire life savings by one phone call
Gerrard Kaonga
Featured Image Credit: TikTok/@winnieandminnie0
A woman has confessed to making a series of errors that resulted in her life savings being stolen after her husband received a concerning phone call demanding he take action.
Scammers aren’t anything new and people have always needed to be vigilant against their antics and schemes to get your money.
But one TikTok star explained how she and her husband got scammed out of their money after an elaborate scheme.
The woman, 28-year-old Amelia Mandeville-Marinaro, explained what happened and admitted that she and her husband should have spotted something wasn't right.
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While holding back tears, she insisted she was making the video to ensure other people don’t fall for a similar scam and can learn from their mistakes.
Speaking in a TikTok video on her page, @winnieandminnie0, she said: “Today, we were scammed which meant that we’ve lost our savings which is, you know, scary because I’m on maternity leave but I wanted to do this video so that other people learn from our mistakes.
“I know people are going to be like, ‘why are you so stupid, it’s obvious it’s a scam’ but I think sometimes, in the moments, you don’t realise it and I’m not doing this video to say we weren’t stupid.”
She noted that her husband, Pete, received a phone call from someone with no call ID who told him that 'someone’s hacked your account, we need to act fast'.
He proceeded to text Amelia and tell her there was an issue but that he was on the phone sorting it.
He asked her to send her bank details, which she did however this did spark some concern as she thought that the bank would surely already know her details.
Her concerns were raised further when her husband said that she would need to approve a payment as the person on the phone was in the process of moving their money to another account to make it ‘safe’.
As this was starting to sound fishy, she checked their online account which informed her that the bank was not currently contacting them.
Pete explained that this was a deliberate message by the bank to throw off the person who had access to their account.
Despite saying that ‘alarm bells were ringing’, she approved the payment and immediately felt regret and said that the whole situation sounded ‘dodgy’.
Amelia said ‘we have just paid someone all of our savings and it was, it was silly, it was stupid of us’ before having to stop the video as she became overwhelmed with anguish.
Pete insisted that they knew a lot of details about their account and came across very convincingly.
Answering people on social media, Amelia said the bank is currently looking into the issue and the pair are hoping they will be able to get their money back.