A MUM was targeted by fraudsters who emptied thousands from her bank account using just her mobile phone number.
Caroline Leary’s number was ported from O2 to Vodafone without her knowledge and fraudsters made off with a total of £3,500.
The 43-year-old woman, from Bonnybridge, Falkrick, Scotland, said the unknown fraudsters also had access to her email, passwords and other personal details and even set up a PayPal credit account.
She told The Sun: “I had nothing left. I had to change everything.
“It’s one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me in my life.”
The mum, who works at Greggs, noticed she couldn’t dial her number on April 18 – then found several missed calls from the same number after work.
She took her phone to her local O2 store and was told her phone had apparently been ported to a rival network – and was warned to check her bank account.
To her dismay, Caroline saw that £3,000 had been taken from her Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) account in one transaction.
She later discovered a further £500 had been transferred in two installments through a PayPal credit account the fraudsters had set up.
When Caroline contacted the police, she was advised to set up new accounts as a precaution.
But she said O2 was “not bothered in the least” and claimed an investigation was underway – meanwhile she has no access to her phone account at all and uses a pay-as-you-go SIM card instead.
She has spent a total of 1,366 minutes calling the network since the ordeal began and has yet to receive a call back.
Caroline is upset that her phone could have been transferred so quickly and without her consent.
She said: “Someone stole my identity and O2 aren’t bothered at all. Every time I speak to them they just pass me by. I’ve been on the phone every day. It never ends.”
“These are people’s lives. They gave out my number.”
She continued: “It’s scary, it’s not a personalized attack, but it is. Scammers know your address, they know where you work, they know everything.”
“They know all your passwords, just from getting your phone number. What if I was an old person? I had sleepless nights.”
Caroline never answers unknown numbers or opens suspicious emails or messages, and is confused as to how she was so easily targeted.
“I’m pretty savvy. I’m very passionate, I would never give away any details or anything like that. Something happened, but I don’t know what. It could happen to anyone,” she said.
“It’s a mental situation, it honestly drove me crazy the whole time.
I have nothing left. I had to change everything. It’s one of the worst things that happened to me in my life.
Caroline Leary
“Everything is affected next when I was at work it stressed me out. I hardly sleep physically, I worry and try to recover my passwords.”
RBS closed her accounts for more than a week while they investigated the fraud and she had to borrow cash from her sister – to the tune of around £100.
However, the £3000 was eventually returned.
But she claims she closed her PayPal account and didn’t get the extra £500 back.
He wants to get his old number back as it has been in use for 15 years.
An O2 spokesperson said: “Unfortunately, Ms Leary fell victim to fraud after a fraudster managed to bypass the security and multi-factor authentication on her MyO2 account in order to transfer her number to another provider.
“We recognize that Ms Leary has had a poor customer experience, for which we apologize and once we receive the customer’s contact details we will speak to her directly to find a solution.”
The Sun has also contacted RBS, PayPal and Police Scotland for comment.