Danny Alexander’s photograph has been used by a con-man as a device to extract money from an American woman. From the Independent:
Francis Rains received a phone call last September telling her she had won $2.5m and a Mercedes-Benz. A man called her a couple of days later, apparently from a Jamaican number, saying she needed to send money to pay off the tax on her prizes.
In order to convince her to send the money, he sent her a picture of ‘himself’. The picture he sent was a smiling picture of Chief secretary to the Treasury,Danny Alexander.
Two other people, one pretending to be from the FBI and another posing as a lawyer, also called.
Sadly, the elderly lady from Kentucky was taken in by the scam and sent off an undisclosed amount of money.
There is information out there aimed at helping elderly people aware of the tactics scammers use, both here and in the US. Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t mean that they all have access to it. Maybe one thing we should all do this weekend is make sure that all the people we know who might just be vulnerable to this sort of scam are aware of the sorts of things that go on and know how to avoid them.
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