A 27-year-old North-west London man, Aaron Godsi, has described how his life was nearly ruined after scammers took almost £15,000 from his account, even on his wedding day.
Godsi became a victim of an aggressive debit card fraud after hackers gained access to his accounts last October. His phone started going off with notifications from his banks of transactions he had not approved.
“I looked at my phone and thought ‘what is going on’. The scammers had somehow taken over my phone and created their own e-SIM for my phone and were able to gain access to all my apps. I didn’t have two-step authentication so they were able to rinse out my entire account. I could see they were ordering stuff from delivery apps. They ended up kicking me out of all my accounts. All my cards were compromised. They tried to take out loans, car loans, and finance jewellery.
“On top of that, on my wedding day this past December, I was in the car right after the ceremony to go to the wedding reception. I was sitting next to my wife, felt something buzzing, and I looked at my phone, and it was happening again. I had to deal with another fraud alert on my wedding day. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t think I’ve ever recovered. This has been one of my darkest times, and you feel extremely vulnerable – I was completely helpless,” Godsi is quoted by MyLondon.
The medium noted that, in the last 12 months, the Met Police recorded the highest number of retail and banking fraud cases at 16,500.
It quoted a survey of 2,000 UK adults by OnePoll on behalf of Confused.com, as reporting that almost 1 in 3 (31 per cent) have been the victim of debit or credit card fraud.
Godsi had to rely on his family to use their phones to contact the police and his banks to try again to access his accounts.
He was able to cancel some of the unauthorised transactions and the attempted finance options they had tried.
However, one thing he couldn’t change was his credit score and how it was affected. At the time, he was setting up his business, Vested Creative.
“I wasn’t able to get everything back, but it wasn’t just about the money. My credit score was affected by the car loan. Then, when I tried to get a new SIM card for my business, they ran a hard check on my name, which completely destroyed my credit score. I wasn’t able to speak to my clients while I lost access to my phone and that lost me business. To be this completely helpless, it was horrible.
“I’ll never have access again to apps like Deliveroo and Uber because they say my phone has too many accounts tied to it. If I go abroad, I can’t book an Uber now, so it’s those small things that still affect my daily life even after everything. This experience could have destroyed my life,” he lamented.
Now, Godsi has access back into his accounts and his marketing agency, Vested Creative, and has set up authenticator apps to ensure heightened security.
Nicola Morgan, consumer finance expert at Confused.com, said: “Card and banking fraud can happen quickly and often without victims realising until it’s too late, which is why staying alert to unusual activity is so important. There are several simple steps people can take to reduce the risk of being targeted. If your card is lost, stolen or used fraudulently, contact your bank straight away so they can freeze or cancel the card and investigate any transactions.”
Godsi also advised people to learn from this ordeal. He said: “People should regularly update their passwords, enable two-step authentication, use an authenticator app and have a separate backup email account. It may seem inconvenient, but those extra layers of protection can make all the difference when someone tries to access your accounts.”
