Fake police calls: how the 'safe account' fraud tricks victims

According to Avon and Somerset Police, fraudsters are calling members of the public and posing as officers from the force. The calls follow a set pattern designed to move someone from alarm to action before they have time to think.

The scam depends on a single moment: the point where the caller offers a "safe account" and the victim believes moving money there protects it, when in fact the account belongs to the fraudster.

How the call is built

The caller opens by saying the victim's personal data has been compromised, or that their bank account is at risk. Sometimes the story is more specific: a suspect has been arrested, and the victim's details turned up during the investigation. To back this up, the caller may give what looks like a genuine crime or case reference number.

Some victims have said the caller already knew personal details about them, including nicknames not normally available publicly. That detail does the work of making the rest of the call believable.

The verification trap

Callers have made the calls appear to come from genuine Avon and Somerset Police numbers. Some people who hung up and rang the number back were then diverted to the real Avon and Somerset Police, which convinced them the original call had been genuine. This is the tell reversed: the usual advice, call back on a known number, has been engineered to fail, because the spoofing sits on the outgoing call, not the number itself.

Reports have come in from people living outside the Avon and Somerset area, which suggests the fraudsters are contacting people across the country while claiming to represent this one force.

The ask

Once trust is established, the caller says the victim's finances are at risk and instructs them to transfer money into a safe account, or to hand over banking details to protect their funds. Amy Samotyj, a fraud protect officer at the force, said the fraudsters are highly convincing and often sound professional, and that they use urgency deliberately to make the calls feel genuine.

The force is clear about what a real investigation never involves. Avon and Somerset Police will never ask someone to move money, transfer funds to a safe account, withdraw cash, buy gift cards, hand over bank cards, or disclose banking security information as part of an investigation. That instruction, on its own, is the point at which the call stops being police work and starts being the fraud.

Samotyj's advice is to end the call and independently verify who has made contact before taking any action. Given that callers have shown they can spoof the display number and redirect a callback, independent verification means using a number or contact method found separately, not one given during the call itself, and not simply redialling the number that appeared on the screen.