Garda warning after local person duped out of €9,000 in scam

Athlone Gardai have issued a strong warning to members of the public never to divulge their banking details to any third party after an incident this week in which a local person had €9,000 removed from their bank account in a sophisticated scam.

“We need people to be scared so that this kind of thing doesn’t keep happening,” said Sergeant Andrew Haran from Athlone Garda Station.

“If we can instil in people to be paranoid about every single phonecall they receive then we might see a decrease in this type of crime, but unfortunately it is happening all the time.”

In the latest incident being investigated by local Garda, the victim, who was aged under 25, received a phonecall purporting to come from the Supreme Court and was eventually “duped” into divulging their bank details in the highly sophisticated and professional scam, according to Sergeant Haran.

Sergeant Haran is advising people to split their money between different accounts if possible, in a bid to avoid holding large amounts of money in their deposit accounts. “It would also be helpful if the banks could work with their customers to make them more aware of this type of crime, and it might even be necessary to introduce measures such as notice accounts, where a bank would have to have 21 days notice before large amounts of money could be withdrawn from a customer account,” he said.

Meanwhile, Gardai in Athlone are continuing to investigate an incident which took place last week in which a local person had €12,000 withdrawn from their bank account.

“We are still trying to ascertain how this person had such a large sum of money taken out of their account, but these types of scams are becoming more and more sophisticated and daring all the time, so everyone needs to maintain a very high degree of vigilance at all times,” said Sergeant Haran.