> The fraudsters had told her to shift her "at risk" cash to an account on a cryptocurrency platform that they emptied - while isolating her from family by stressing secrecy and coaching her on how to respond to sceptical bank officials. "They knew the name of my financial adviser, they were utterly convincing as FCA staff," she said. "And they told me I could not tell anyone about the investigation as it would damage their efforts to catch the crooks."
I think it can be easy to read things like this and see them as obvious scams but the fraudsters only need to trick a few people as the payout is large, and they are strongly incentivised to come up with the most optimised flow for scamming people.
This is an underrated observation - you could target 1000 people for £100 each, or you could put your time and effort into targeting and tricking the whale for £100k, a payout worth putting the homework into.
