Haunted by shame: victims of bank transfer scams tell of lasting trauma

Mary Higgins’s life changed the moment the phone rang one afternoon in November. The caller claimed to be from the Metropolitan police fraud department and told her that her bank cards had been compromised.

In an elaborate scam, involving two days of phone calls from fake officials, the 78-year-old was persuaded that she was helping police with a money-laundering sting in which her bank was complicit and agreed to transfer £10,000 from her Santander account to “safe” havens.

It was not just her savings that were taken from her: she also lost her confidence, trust and self-respect. Santander eventually refunded her losses but, four months on, Higgins still panics if an