Looking for a bit of advice to try and get to the bottom of this because I’m starting to wonder if I’m overthinking it.

Last week, I picked up a call because the call screening came up as “Gemma Bradford Police”. I don’t live in Bradford, have never lived there, and have absolutely no connection to the area, so I answered because it seemed strange.

A bloke with a Bradford accent answered and said, “Hi, this is PC so and so is this Gemma?” I said, “No, sorry.” He went, “Oh, is it not?” I said I thought he must have the wrong number, he apologised and hung up. I thought nothing more of it and assumed it was just a wrong number.

Then, two days later, I missed another call. When I called the number back, it took me through the automated dial menu for Wolfson House, NHS East London. Again, I don’t live in East London and have never had any connection to the area.

Then today I got a voicemail saying:
“Hi Ethan, my name is David. I saw you’re expanding the BDR team. Um, I was in SDR at Navarne…”
I have absolutely no idea what any of that means. I called the number back and the same bloke answered saying, “Hi Ethan, thanks for the call back.” When I explained that he had the wrong number, in my very obviously female voice, he seemed genuinely confused, apologised and hung up.

All three calls seem legitimate and sincere, rather than obvious scam calls, and they all seem completely unrelated. But I just can’t get my head around getting three seemingly genuine wrong number calls in the space of four days, especially when I’ve basically never had a wrong number before.

Is there an obvious explanation for this that I’m missing, or am I completely overthinking it? Could there be something going on with my phone number that would explain why completely unrelated people are being given it?

Had a missed call from 2 different numbers. Voicemail left both times saying “to discuss a job with you please add my number on WhatsApp”. I’m a plumber so first one seemed odd but possible, second one got me questioning. Different number but definitely same voice in both voicemails.
Anyone heard of a scam that starts that way, not sure what the angle could be, obviously if they have my number and want to discuss a job they could just WhatsApp me directly? Don’t get the add my number on WhatsApp bit

I did enquire an escort on the 7th this month but I didn’t meet up with her nor agreed to anything. Is this phony?

Text messages I received today:

Unknown: Call me

Me: who is this

Unknown: I m arben
I m the boss of the escort you supposed to meet from some days ago
Call me to talk otherwise we will sort this in person

Me: What is this about

Unknown: I have a conversation between your phone number and my escort, Ana is her name from the date of 7. You put my escort to you wait and you didn’t answer after that anymore to her, my girl was waiting for you. In this kind of business time is money and if one of my girls lose money i lose money. While she was waiting for you she lost two other appointments. At this moment its just between me and you because my main option is to sort this respectfully that s why i called you first otherwise we will finish this in person you me and my cousins and you will have to pay for every guy out there. I hope this is clear enough

Regarding your answer i know what i have to do next

Me: What date was I supposed to meet her? Give me the exact date

Unknown: 7, I ve told you that already

Me: 7th of this month?

Unknown: Yes

If i don’t have an answer in the next minutes you will have a big surprise

Mark my words

If you think i m playing a fucking game its your choice

But that will cost you

Just received a £50 gift card for my birthday which isn’t being recognised, no balance loading on the card in the checker so does that mean it was likely swapped/stolen at the till? It was bought in a Morrisons by a woman in her 80s who is very trusting and wouldn’t notice if it was swapped after scanning/loading.

Why aren’t supermarkets required to keep gift cards in the till? It would prevent them being taken off the rack by fraudsters and then out back on once they have the PIN. Seems like there is more security for a book of stamps than gift cards.

The fact that it doesn’t come up as have a zero balance and just looks like an unloaded/unused number make me suspect the till person but is that likely to have happened in this case?

I feel bad going back to the purchaser as she’s lost confidence lately after a scam and this won’t help. She did get a receipt for it when it was given to her.

Hope it’s okay to post since I’ve only just joined.

A few days ago I had an email stating I have an “outstanding balance” that needs to be settled ASAP or I would be facing County Court proceedings.
I’ve done a quick Google search after they accused me of failing to engage and lo and behold, it’s a scam.

I genuinely thought it was real since I currently have a debt that I’m working on getting a payment plan for. I was stupid and responded to the email. They had my first name but no specific details of who the debt was owed to or my address.

Please beware of any correspondence from this email:

denialkerrigandbddebtsrecovery@gmail.com

And this “company”:

DBD Debt Recovery

P.S. They have my email, mobile number and surname now since they are on my email signature. If anyone has any advice on what to do about this, I’d appreciate it a lot. TIA :-)

Hi all,

Location: UK

I have had someone use my details last month (name, email, post code and email address) to make a bunch of enquiries for “breast augmentation” and “vaginal tightening”. (Never heard of either in my life to be honest).

Long story short, I made an excel file to collate all the evidence of when the calls, texts and emails started rushing in trying to chase up the enquiries but I had to explain to all it wasn’t me and my details were compromised. It feels like a targeted and intentional attack. Why? I’m not sure as I’ve never done this to anyone and am not arguing or at war with anyone in my life currently. I put it down to an insecure, jealous person who just wanted to ruin my day. I did file a fraud report (that’s what I was directed to after following the police helpline automated machine). The case was closed down the day after.

Recently, over this weekend I’ve now had more enquiries submitted using my details again but for laser this time and some plastic surgeon places.

I’m going to add to my excel doc (even tho I couldn’t upload this on the fraud website), submit another report but majority of these places said they can’t reveal or find location of where the enquiry was made because that requires a police investigation.

Can someone please kindly advise what I should do in this situation? I’m starting to doubt people close to me but I also don’t want to emotionally stress myself out like that.

Someone has set up a Walmart account using my email address and placed an order to an address in the US. The name, address and Visa card details on the order confirmation aren’t mine.

I cannot log into the account as they’ve set up two factor authentication with their mobile number. I can’t see a way to contact Walmart customer services from the UK without being able to log in.

Anyone experienced this / can help?

Something bad happened earlier. I was looking on Tik Tok to find a company that sells a product I want, i found one, went on their website that looked legit, messaged them and they sent me a WhatsApp message from an UK 07 number. The first thing they said was “hello, let’s sort out your order. First can I have your delivery address” I sent it before I knew it was a scam, (stupid I know), then they asked me to send money (£60) via an app called tap tap, they asked me to put the currency to Cameroon, this immediately sparked “scam” in my head and I blocked them.

10 mins later they then sent me a WhatsApp message from a Cameroon number, with a picture of my WhatsApp picture with the words on it “she’s wanted, £4000 reward plus 2x vapes and 3x gummies, details below” the details was my home address, this has scared the life out of me.

I called 101 and reported it. What will happen? I’m scared for my life. I told my ex boyfriend, he messaged their 07 number and told them to go away etc and they said “do you know who I am? I’ll end both you and your girl, I’ve had people on their knees begging for there life and it didn’t end well” police said it’s a common scare tactic, but what I don’t understand is how a foreign person from Cameroon have a seperate 07 number and can speak perfect English using English slang. What do I do? Am I going to get hurt?

My husband has ordered a sofa from Furniture Hub UK for £349. It is a sofa that looks identical to other sofas listed on places on Amazon and B&Q.

My husband placed the order yesterday and they confirmed delivery today. We received a call from the 'driver' but missed the call. However, when we called back it went to voicemail. The driver apparently was due to call 1 hour before he arrived.

Soon after, we received a message from the 'customer service' with a video of the van which had 'broken down' and being collected by a recovery van.

I think we may be being scammed? They have now said they will deliver Monday. I also want to add that it is cash on delivery.

Does anyone have any advice for us? I'm worried we will be pressured by people who arrived and enter our house.

Please help!!!!

I received a call the other day, that claimed to be Visa, saying that someone spent £700 from my account on Amazon.

I knew this was a scam for a number of reasons.

1 - It came from a mobile number. Why would they call from a mobile number?

2 - Robotic voice that didn't even try to sound human.

3 - None of my cards are Visa.

4 - I currently don't have £700 for someone to spend on Amazon. So it wouldn't have gone through

5 - I get notifications from my banking app about spending. Even if It failed to go through. So it would have said "You attended to spend...". I didn't get a notification.

They might try and change it up a bit. Different amounts, different card issuers, different places spent. If they haven't already, they might get someone where everything seems plausible. So be careful.

I’ve had a couple of calls recently from random numbers that I have never called, claiming that they had a missed call from me.

Both times it was different people.

Is this a scam? Why do they think that I called them when I didnt?

This last month I get at least 2 phone calls everyday telling me I have credit card debt or an O2 account, I don’t have either. It’s always a new mobile number each time and I don’t fancy changing my number. What can do to get them to stop ringing? I’ve asked politely to take my number off there system I make jokes at them in hopes they’ll get fed up and even tried the angry way but they don’t stop. What can I do to get them to stop?

My wife took a seemingly legit call from Chase Bank, claiming our account had unusual activity.

They wanted us to reject certain payments and accept other as part of changing bank account numbers so the activity will stop. All via iPhone screen sharing. During the call, there was another scammer on the phone scamming, and this background noise was what really caught our ear.

Fortunately my wife caught it before they hit out current account, but they did get £5k on the credit card. Which will be protected.

PLEASE be careful. We were lucky and won’t have lost any money. But as people who are fully aware of this type of thing, we still got caught.

This was a number used.
07757 677595

Watch out for visa security - they can be pretty rude - viewer discretion is advised!

so about two years ago a friend messages me telling me he’s got something going on and asks me to transfer money for him (yes I know this is typical for fraudsters and scammers now but i genuinely trusted him as we went to school for years and he has even been to my house and spent a lot of time with me). I ended up doing it just to find out months later that he actually claimed universal credit under my name and tricked me into thinking he sent me the money to send to him. He allowed me to keep around £200 but I genuinely thought it was just my boy being my boy (I gladly would’ve given £200 if he asked and needed at the time). After the initial letter which was a couple months after the exchange I messaged him asking to sort it because atp i still had no knowledge of what Universal credit was as a 19 year old at university. He would constantly tell me he would pay it off, or call them and sort it out and as the idiot i clearly am, I trusted him to. The money was never an insanely pressing issue to me so paying back that 1.2k in instalments per month was doable for me. Now I’ve paid over 800 to DWP and finally came to him, putting my foot down and asking him to pay the money or come clean FOR BEING A CRIMINAL AND USING MY DETAILS TO FRAUDULENTLY CLAIM BENEFITS … he blocked me. So me being me I messaged him everywhere i could, got a second number all this rubbish. He eventually replied and picked up and started to unblock me once i threatened authorities. Now again I’ve been messaging him and its evolved to me basically calling him scum and looking for relatives of his to contact out of anger and frustration. I have called the police but they’re fucking useless as well as my bank who are useless without a police report. I don’t know any of his info except his social and university. What can I realistically do to him to either give me the money to pay back or make his life hell.