Your Money to Phone Scammers
By Tessa Pang | Magazine | February 6, 2022
Cover Illustration: A person looking upset with an incident that happened over the phone. Adrian Swanca / Unsplash
Magazine reporter Tessa Pang jumps right into the heart of the past months’ Dutch telephone scam in an in-depth interview with one of its victims who lost thousands of euros.
“I had really bad dreams for days after. I just kept hearing the woman say – don’t tell anyone or you’ll lose everything.”
Lizzie (alias) is one of the victims of a phone scam that has been running rampant in the Netherlands. Scammers have been posing as officials of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands and stripping people of thousands of euros.
“I was at work and I got a call. It was a recording, it almost sounded like in the US when someone’s trying to call you from jail. The recording says – you’ve received a call from the Supreme Court of the Netherlands related to suspicious activity linked to your BSN number, press one to be connected to an agent.”
Lizzie wasn’t immediately suspicious. She had read an article a few weeks earlier about a data leak from her previous university. She thought it could have potentially been related to that so she pressed one to be patched through to the agent.
“It was a guy on the phone. I think he introduced himself as Dave. He told me that they raided a house and found – I don’t even know how many kilograms – but a lot of cocaine. And he said they investigated it and a bunch of other fraud related crimes and everything linked back to my BSN number.”
“I just immediately started crying. But the guy was so calm and friendly – so reassuring that it was going to be ok.” ‘Dave’ kept assuring her that as long as she stayed on the line he could help her, but under no circumstances was she allowed to hang up or tell anyone else what was happening. So, she stayed on the line. “He even told me a case file number to write down and everything. It just all sounded very legit.”
‘Dave’ then transferred her to his colleague. “She was definitely more pushy and she wasn’t as nice. She asked me how many bank accounts I had and how much money I had in each account.” At this point, Lizzie already trusted them – so she told them everything.
“They told me someone had control over my BSN and they were now trying to take all of my money out of my account.” The woman on the phone assured her they could secure her money while they worked on getting her a new BSN number. All she had to do was transfer all her money out of her accounts where the Dutch courts could keep it safe. “They told me within 24 hours I would get all my money back.”
Lizzie began the process of transferring all of her money out of her accounts. First using TransferWise, then Azimo, then Remitly and when that didn’t work they pressured her to transfer directly out of her ING account.
The entire process took over two hours. She had transferred over €4000. She was exhausted and emotionally drained. “After I hung up the phone, I still thought I was in danger and that someone actually stole my identity and was committing all of these crimes.”
She was too afraid to tell anyone, even her own boyfriend. “When my boyfriend picked me up from work – and I was crying – I was so scared to tell him what was going on because I believed if I did he would get into trouble too. I was completely brainwashed.”
Eventually, Lizzie made the decision to go to the police. “Right away they were like – oh yep you’ve been scammed.” The police officers took her statement but told her there was basically nothing they could do about it. “They weren’t even going to investigate the case. The bank account I had transferred my money to was in Thailand and it wasn’t like they were going to go to Thailand to figure it out.” They told her the only way they would open an investigation was if more cases like hers came up.
For phone scam victims like Lizzie, there has been no closure. Many have had thousands of euros stolen out of their pockets, with the banks and the police unable and unwilling to help.
During my investigation, I reached out to both the Dutch Police and the Fraudehelpdesk to try to gauge just how prolific this scam is. While the police were unable to tell me how many cases had been reported to them, the Fraudehelpdesk disclosed that they received 9,514 reports of the scam in 2021 and an additional 668 cases in 2022 as of January 18. Clearly, the perpetrators of the scam are showing no signs of slowing down, and the police and courts needed to take much tougher action to protect people from falling victim.
“I felt very stupid for the next few days… I mostly lost confidence in myself because I kept thinking how could I have fallen for it? Even though both the police and my boyfriend told me that they are professional scammers, and they could really trick anyone’s brain, I still really felt like I was dumb.”
Now four months later, Lizzie is doing her best to try to forget about the incident. She hopes that telling her story can prevent more people from being put in the same situation as her. The main advice she has for people who get a call from anyone claiming they are from the national police or the Dutch Supreme Court is to hang up immediately and report the crime to the Fraudehelpdesk.
If you have been affected by this scam, please get in touch with me to be a part of a possible project: tessa1916@gmail.com.
Tessa Pang is a student at the University of Amsterdam. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of The Amsterdammer.
