London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Sep 18, 2025

Phone scammers: 'Give me £1,000 to stop calling you'

Phone scammers: 'Give me £1,000 to stop calling you'

When my landline rings (yes, I still have a landline), it is only ever going to be either my mum, my mother-in-law or a scam caller.

Most adults have had some sort of scam call but the elderly are particularly targeted

These days, the mum chats are far outnumbered by the scams.

Last week, fed up with their frequency, I asked the caller, who claimed to be from Microsoft's technical department, where she had got my number. "Take me off the list," I asked.

"Give me £1,000 and I will," she replied.

It felt like an audacious new low for an industry that already seems to be getting out of hand.

And for some, such calls are a lot more than just a nuisance.

One woman had a mobile call telling her that there was an ongoing court case against her over an unpaid tax bill. The judge and jury were on the line, the scammer told her, but if she immediately transferred payment of £999, the case would go better for her.

She panicked and paid but was told it was not enough. So she went to the bank, with the scammer still on the line, and sent another £4,000.

"As soon as she had done it, she realised it was a scam," said Louise Baxter-Scott, head of the national Trading Standards scam team.

According to Trading Standards, there has been a surge in such calls during lockdown.

"Everyone is at home so they are easy prey," said Ms Baxter-Scott.

And the scams are getting more sophisticated and more threatening.

One currently doing the rounds, purporting to be from the National Crime Agency, claims there is a warrant out for your arrest for "serious offences".

Another common claim is that National Insurance numbers have been stolen, which might seem plausible given the number of data thefts.

Although the request to immediately send money to the tax office should ring alarm bells.

Increasingly the calls are coming through to people's mobile phones, often appearing as a UK number to add another layer of legitimacy.

The top three problems Trading Standards identified were:

*  people selling insurance for white goods, offering cover for fridges, freezers and washing machines

*  impersonation callers claiming to be from the NHS, BT, Amazon or utility firms

*  domestic home repairs such as boiler services and drainage

Some of these are defined as nuisance calls because they are actually selling something - albeit it something you probably do not need. Others are out-and-out scams.

People are thought to receive an average of seven scam or nuisance calls per month.

Scammers are particularly targeting the elderly.

Blocking calls


Trading Standards provided 2,000 call-blocking devices to people's homes to test their effectiveness at preventing the calls and to provide intelligence about the perpetrators.

The trial suggested such technology blocked more than 90% of unwanted calls.

Stevie Corbin-Clarke, a research assistant at Bournemouth University, worked on the project to understand the effect scams have on the public.

Call blockers check all calls before the phone rings, blocking those not approved by the owner and offering unknown numbers the chance to prove their identity

Her research concluded that receiving scam and nuisance calls had a significant effect on people's wellbeing.

All regular landline users were likely to benefit from having a call blocker and they should also be made available to vulnerable individuals, the research suggested.

Robocalls


Similar blockers such as YouMail exist in the US, where automated calls, or robocalls, are getting out of hand.

A Business Insider survey suggested that half of Americans reported receiving scam phone calls on their mobiles every day, with another quarter receiving them several times per week.

During February, 4.6 billion were made, according to YouMail's chief executive Alex Quilici.

"The 2020 pandemic closed call centres so there were fewer, but now everything is opening up and robocalls are back," he told the BBC.

So-called robodiallers, often located overseas, make millions of calls per hour.

"It costs almost nothing to make these phone calls and they don't need a lot of people to respond to make a profit," said Mr Quilici.

He described how one New York-based woman in her 60s lost her life savings - some $350,000 - to a tax office scam. A student in her twenties lost $40,000 to a language school fraud scheme.

YouMail is a free app, although the firm offers a premium paid-for service to small businesses, and so far 10 million have signed up.

In the long run, Mr Quilici believes the problem will become rather like email spam - it will reach a certain level of intolerability, forcing both technological solutions and consumers to change behaviour.

"That combination will work but it will take a long time," he said.

As part of the fightback, last year the US Department of Justice launched cases against five companies they alleged were gateway carriers - allowing hundreds of millions of robocalls into the US phone system.

Meanwhile in the UK last month, the Information Commissioner's Office issued fines amounting to £270,000 to two separate companies for making unlawful marketing calls to numbers registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS).

Just a month earlier it handed out £480,000 worth of fines to four other companies.

Despite the fines, which are not always paid, similar firms keep popping back up.

Ms Baxter-Scott thinks phone companies could do more "to block calls on their networks".

And she is hoping that the trial with call blockers can be extended to local authorities.

"It is proven that having a £100 call blocker reduces anxiety, insomnia and wellbeing so it make sense to fund this," she said.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Macron and his wife to provide 'scientific photographic evidence' that she is a real woman
US Tech Giants Pledge Billions to UK AI Infrastructure Following Starmer's Call
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
DeepMind and OpenAI Achieve Gold at ‘Coding Olympics’ in AI Milestone
SEC Allows Public Companies to Block Investors from Class-Action Lawsuits
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Federal Reserve Cuts Rates by Quarter Point and Signals More to Come
Effective and Impressive Generation Z Protest: Images from the Riots in Nepal
European manufacturers against ban on polluting cars: "The industry may collapse"
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Trump: Cancel quarterly company reports and settle for reporting once every six months
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
US Launches New Pilot Program to Accelerate eVTOL Air Taxi Deployment
Christian Brueckner Released from German Prison after Serving Unrelated Sentence
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Hong Kong Industry Group Calls for HK$20 Billion Support Fund to Ease Property Market Stress
Joe Biden’s Post-Presidency Speaking Fees Face Weak Demand amid Corporate Reluctance
Charlie Kirk's murder will break the left's hateful cancel tactics
Kash Patel erupts at ‘buffoon’ Sen. Adam Schiff over Russiagate: ‘You are the biggest fraud’
Homeland Security says Emmy speech ‘fanning the flames of hatred’ after Einbinder’s ‘F— ICE’ remark
Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Assassin Tyler Robinson Faces Death Penalty as Charges Formally Announced
Actor, director, environmentalist Robert Redford dies at 89
The conservative right spreads westward: a huge achievement for 'Alternative for Germany' in local elections
JD Vance Says There Is “No Unity” with Those Who Celebrate Charlie Kirk’s Killing, and he is right!
Trump sues the 'New York Times' for an astronomical sum of 15 billion dollars
Florida Hospital Welcomes Its Largest-Ever Baby: Annan, Nearly Fourteen Pounds at Birth
U.S. and Britain Poised to Finalize Over $10 Billion in High-Tech, Nuclear and Defense Deals During Trump State Visit
China Finds Nvidia Violated Antitrust Laws in Mellanox Deal, Deepens Trade Tensions with US
US Air Force Begins Modifications on Qatar-Donated Jet Amid Plans to Use It as Air Force One
Pope Leo Warns of Societal Crisis Over Mega-CEO Pay, Citing Tesla’s Proposed Trillion-Dollar Package
Poland Green-Lights NATO Deployment in Response to Major Russian Drone Incursion
Elon Musk Retakes Lead as World’s Richest After Brief Ellison Surge
U.S. and China Agree on Framework to Shift TikTok to American Ownership
London Daily Podcast: London Massive Pro Democracy Rally, Musk Support, UK Economic Data and Premier League Results Mark Eventful Weekend
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Le Pen Tightens the Pressure on Macron as France Edges Toward Political Breakdown
Musk calls for new UK government at huge pro-democracy rally in London, but Britons have been brainwashed to obey instead of fighting for their human rights
Elon Musk responds to post calling for the murder of Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk: 'Either we fight back or they will kill us'
Czech Republic signs €1.34 billion contract for Leopard 2A8 main battle tanks with delivery from 2028
USA: Office Depot Employees Refused to Print Poster in Memory of Charlie Kirk – and Were Fired
Proposed U.S. Bill Would Allow Civil Suits Against Judges Who Release Repeat Violent Offenders
Penske Media Sues Google Over “AI Overviews,” Claiming It Uses Journalism Without Consent and Destroys Traffic
Indian Student Engineers Propose “Project REBIRTH” to Protect Aircraft from Crashes Using AI, Airbags and Smart Materials
French Debt Downgrade Piles Pressure on Macron’s New Prime Minister
US and UK Near Tech, Nuclear and Whisky Deals Ahead of Trump Trip
One in Three Europeans Now Uses TikTok, According to the Chinese Tech Giant
Could AI Nursing Robots Help Healthcare Staffing Shortages?
NATO Deploys ‘Eastern Sentry’ After Russian Drones Violate Polish Airspace
Anesthesiologist Left Operation Mid-Surgery to Have Sex with Nurse
×