PLEASE BE AWARE FOLKS...:thumbsdown:
This was just e-mailed to me by a female colleague but not sure now if it is a genuine crime ...
"Just as a quick warning to you - I just got assaulted at an HSBC cashpoint in Hanover Sq at lunchtime (broad daylight, with a queue behind me) and £200 was taken from my account.
Turns out there's a gang of very smart Romanians (in my case it was 2 guys and a girl) who are posing as free-newspaper-giver-outers - they waited until i'd keyed in my pin and hit the 'Get Cash' option before coming up from both sides, jostling me and thrusting their newspapers at me and trying to persuade me to take one.
Behind the papers, the guy on my left hit the £200 button and the girl on the right grabbed the cash - they were so fast that no one in the queue even saw them take it, and just assumed they were harrassing me to take a paper (my card got returned to me out of the machine).
It was only when I went into the bank to tell them there were people harrassing cashpoint users and to double check they hadn't taken any cash that we realised. Went to the police and it turns out they've been targeting women around Mayfair and Goodge St and elsewhere around Oxford Circus with a huge number of incidents in the past couple of weeks - all in broad daylight and in very open places, and always taking £200.
The advice is to use cash machines inside banks or get cashback if you're in these areas.”
In any event where cash getting is concerned BE CAREFUL YOURSELVES ...
I haven't been back long enough to be aware if anyone else has experienced this or posted a similar case ... but in my opinion one cannot over-state these problems or warn too often against the sort of tricks these scheisters are getting up to ... :razz:
This was just e-mailed to me by a female colleague but not sure now if it is a genuine crime ...
"Just as a quick warning to you - I just got assaulted at an HSBC cashpoint in Hanover Sq at lunchtime (broad daylight, with a queue behind me) and £200 was taken from my account.
Turns out there's a gang of very smart Romanians (in my case it was 2 guys and a girl) who are posing as free-newspaper-giver-outers - they waited until i'd keyed in my pin and hit the 'Get Cash' option before coming up from both sides, jostling me and thrusting their newspapers at me and trying to persuade me to take one.
Behind the papers, the guy on my left hit the £200 button and the girl on the right grabbed the cash - they were so fast that no one in the queue even saw them take it, and just assumed they were harrassing me to take a paper (my card got returned to me out of the machine).
It was only when I went into the bank to tell them there were people harrassing cashpoint users and to double check they hadn't taken any cash that we realised. Went to the police and it turns out they've been targeting women around Mayfair and Goodge St and elsewhere around Oxford Circus with a huge number of incidents in the past couple of weeks - all in broad daylight and in very open places, and always taking £200.
The advice is to use cash machines inside banks or get cashback if you're in these areas.”
In any event where cash getting is concerned BE CAREFUL YOURSELVES ...
I haven't been back long enough to be aware if anyone else has experienced this or posted a similar case ... but in my opinion one cannot over-state these problems or warn too often against the sort of tricks these scheisters are getting up to ... :razz:
