Labour MP’s bank account targeted by scammers three times in three weeks
A Labour MP has told Sky News she had her bank account targeted by scammers three times in three weeks.
Carolyn Harris, who represents Swansea East and is deputy leader of Welsh Labour, said she went through four debit cards in a month after the raft of fraudulent transactions.
And she is worried more vulnerable customers will not know when cash is being taken from their accounts, or have access to their money when their cards are cancelled, if they don’t use mobile banking apps.
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The saga began on a Thursday in September when Ms Harris started receiving texts asking her to authorise payments, ranging from £300 to £1,500, which she continually declined.
“I phoned the bank that night and told them I thought someone was trying to scam me,” she said. “I waited quite a long time to speak to the fraud team, then I got cut off.”
Two days later when shopping in Swansea, the MP was alerted to a problem with her account again.
“I bought one thing with my card and it was fine, but when I went to the market to buy fruit and meat, my card got declined,” she said.
“So I went to the cash point to get money out and it got declined again.”
Ms Harris headed inside the bank to get advice, but after a long queue, she was told any queries had to go through the fraud team – meaning another 40 minute wait on the phone to speak to the department.
“The person wasn’t very nice if I am honest and only wanted one word answers,” she said.
“After a quite fraught conversation, they said I had been scammed, they cancelled my card and promised another would be delivered five days later, which it was.”
But the Labour politician was soon hit again by another scammer.
‘I was stuck in London without any money’
“I’d had my new card for three days and was sat in my flat in London on a Sunday night before heading into parliament the next morning,” said Ms Harris.
“I took a look at my account to see if money that had been taken before had been refunded and I saw more transactions.
“I was worried, I was stuck in London without any money as I only had my card, so couldn’t get anything.”
Another phone call and another cancelled card later, she was thankfully able to download her new card onto her phone so she could use it straight away, while the physical version would be sent to her home by the end of the week.
But her scamming experience wasn’t over yet.
“Roll on another two weeks and I am lying on a sun lounger on holiday in Portugal,” she said. “And there are even more transactions, this time all going to either Facebook or in foreign currencies.”
Back on the phone to the bank and it appeared the scammers had managed to set up standing orders from her account, meaning she wasn’t even notified of the amounts going out.
“That’s three weeks, three lots of scams, and four cards in a month,” she said. “And [the bank] had no idea at all how it happened, no-one seems to know.”
Ms Harris mentioned her experience to a Home Affairs Committee about policing priorities
Ms Harris told the Home Affairs Committee that she called the police on her return to the UK, as not only had scammers targeted her, but they’d also targeted one of her staff members, which she thought was suspicious.
“They came to see me, but they can’t do anything at all,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, my local force are brilliant, but all these transactions were happening abroad and they aren’t able to sort this.”
For Ms Harris, it was a case of inconvenience, needing to get the new cards and update details for her subscriptions, like Netflix, Amazon and her car tax.
But she is concerned that not everyone would be in the same position.
“I had an app on my phone so I could check transactions and I was able to download a new card onto my phone too,” she said. “There is no way on God’s earth some pensioners would be able to do that.
“Even my husband doesn’t have an app on his phone and doesn’t check… and he doesn’t think that is abnormal.
“If it happened to my mother, she wouldn’t know until the bank statement came the next month or until her card got declined.
“And when I was on holiday, I asked if I could go into a branch with a passport and get money out and they said no. What would she have done?”
‘There has to be a better way’
The Labour MP said it made her worry even more about local high street branches closing down, adding: “Technology is a wonderful thing, but only if you are up to date with it.”
She said “there has to be a better way” for banks to stop fraud happening in the first place and making their customers aware if they aren’t online or using mobile banking.
“I remember booking three flights once and when I went online to book another two… my card got declined and I got a phone call, so the technology is there,” she said.
“Banks have to get better at telling people.”
Action Fraud has published advice on how to protect yourself and your account:
• Don’t throw out anything with your name, address or financial details without shredding it first
• Don’t leave things like bills lying around for others to look at
• Never reveal your full password, login details or account numbers to anyone who contacts you through an unsolicited call or email
• Ask any caller to give you a main switchboard number, or hang up and call your bank back on the legitimate phone number printed on your bank statements
• Check your statements carefully and reporting anything suspicious to the financial institution concerned.
New pictures show the moment of impact as an Israeli missile hit a Beirut apartment block and exploded.
The block was one of five buildings destroyed by airstrikes on Friday alone.
Israel launched airstrikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut in a fourth consecutive day of intense attacks.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
An Associated Press photographer captured a sequence of images showing an Israeli bomb approaching and hitting a multi-storey apartment building in Beirut’s Tayouneh area.
Richard Weir, a senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch, reviewed the close-up photos to determine what type of weapon was used.
“The bomb and components visible in the photographs, including the strake, wire harness cover, and tail fin section, are consistent with a Mk-84 series 2,000-pound class general purpose bomb equipped with Boeing’s joint directed attack munition tail kit,” he told AP.
Pics: AP
Smoke covers a building that collapses following the strike. Pic: AP
Deadly strikes as bombardment stepped up
Israel stepped up its bombardment this week – an escalation that has coincided with signs of movement in US-led diplomacy towards a ceasefire.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets attacked munitions warehouses, a headquarters and other Hezbollah infrastructure. It issued a warning on social media identifying buildings ahead of the strikes.
Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike killed five members of the same family in a home in Ain Qana in the southern province of Nabatiyeh, Lebanon’s state media said.
The report said a mother, father and their three children were killed but didn’t provide their ages.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Three other Israeli strikes killed six people and wounded 32 in different parts of Tyre province on Friday, also in south Lebanon, the report said.
Video footage also showed a building being struck and turning into a cloud of rubble and debris that billowed into Horsh Beirut, the city’s main park.
Residents check the site of the airstrike in Tayouneh, Beirut. Pic: AP
More than 3,200 people have been killed in Lebanon during 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah – most of them since mid-September.
About 27% of those killed were women and children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Israel dramatically escalated its bombardment of Lebanon from September, vowing to cripple Hezbollah and end its barrages in Israel.
Friday’s strikes come as Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has asked Iran to help secure a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
The prime minister appeared to urge Ali Larijani, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to convince the militant group to agree to a deal that could require it to pull back from the Israel-Lebanon border.
Iran is a main backer of Hezbollah and for decades has been funding and arming the Lebanese militant group.
On Thursday, Eli Cohen, Israel’s energy minister and a member of its security cabinet, said that prospects for a ceasefire with Lebanon were the most promising since the conflict began.
The Washington Post reported Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was rushing to advance a Lebanon ceasefire to deliver an early foreign policy win to his ally, US President-elect Donald Trump.
“Super high-IQ revolutionaries” who are willing to work 80+ hours a week are being urged to join Elon Musk’s new cost-cutting department in Donald Trump’s incoming US government.
The X and Tesla owner will co-lead the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
And in a post on X, the official DOGE account put out a call to arms for people to sign up and help “dismantle government bureaucracy”.
The post said: “We are very grateful to the thousands of Americans who have expressed interest in helping us at DOGE.
“We don’t need more part-time idea generators.
“We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.
“If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”
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Elon Musk speaking at an event held at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Pic: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
In a reply to an interested party, Mr Musk suggested the lucky applicants would be working for free.
“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lost of enemies & compensation is zero,” the world’s richest man wrote.
“What a great deal!”
When announcing the new department, President-elect Donald Trump said Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy “will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”.
Mr Musk has previously made clear his desire to see cuts to “government waste” and in a post on his X platform suggested he could axe as many as three-quarters of the more than 400 federal departments in the US, writing: “99 is enough.”
At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.
A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.
Two people remain in a critical condition following the blaze. Pic: AP
They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.
Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.
Several residents were treated for smoke inhalation. Pic: AP
Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.
The residence is home to 82 elderly residents.
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The blaze started in one of the rooms, Fernando Beltran, the national government’s top official in the region, told reporters.
All of the victims were elderly residents, he added.
Relatives wait for news outside the care home. Pic: AP
Fire crews, paramedics and police officers remain on site, said a spokesperson for the regional government of Aragon who confirmed the fatalities.
It took firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, they said.
The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated.
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