Got yourself a free mobile phone delivered? Watch out

People tell me that this is a known scam, but to be honest I’d not heard about it. However, a neighbour (at least according to the Neighbourhood Watch Newsletter I seem to get every week) had scammers do this to him. Luckily the guy realised, but this is what happened and this is generally how it works.

Yesterday a local had two mobile phones delivered by DPD. They were correctly addressed to him, but he’d not ordered any mobile phones. About ten minutes later he received a telephone call, supposedly from DPD, saying the phones had been delivered by mistake and that another courier would collect them.

Got yourself a free mobile phone delivered? Watch out

Obviously this “other courier” is the offender who’d ordered the phones. Luckily the guy who’d received the phones realised what was going on and called the local police.

Now clearly their personal details, including name, address, phone number and account details had been used fraudulently to purchase these. It could be that his card had been cloned, but sometimes companies will only deliver goods to the card holders address, so the offender has to get the items delivered to the registered address instead, then take it back by pretending to work for the courier company who delivered it.

What’s perhaps more scary about this is the fact that the person or people behind the operation know the home phone number, the credit / debit card details, the home address and more.

You may remember an earlier scam involving phones, but be aware if you suddenly receive some unexpected deliveries, esepecially if they’re highly valuable mobile phones.

This particular scam hasn’t been seen for a while, but it’s expected to increase as we head towards Christmas. Keep an eye on your credit or debit card details. Don’t let you card go out of sight.