‘He spent thousands’: how a bank team tries to rescue scam victims
Santander’s specialist squad aims to save customers from the grips of fraudsters offering romance and more
A widowed pensioner is on the end of the phone and he’s flustered. He’s expecting his girlfriend to move in with him next month. He has never met her, but he has photos of a young blonde woman and weeks of texts pledging her devotion.
On an industrial estate in Bootle on Merseyside, Clare is trying to deflate his dreams. She is a call handler on Santander’s Break the Spell team, which is part of the high street bank’s fraud prevention department. It is her job to convince the man that his girlfriend is actually a scammer who has defrauded him of his savings.
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