Revisited: The pandemic scam artists making millions during lockdown

This week we are revisiting some of our favourite episodes from earlier in the year. This episode was first broadcast on 24 May.

Email and text frauds are nothing new, but with a boom in online shopping during the coronavirus crisis, their anonymous perpetrators have hit on a lucrative twist. Rachel Humphreys hears from Rose, who thought little of filling out a web form to arrange the redelivery of a pot of face cream and set off a chain of events that would wind up with a fraudster emptying her bank account.

Rachel also speaks to Hilary Osborne, the Guardian’s money and consumer editor, who has been investigating the scale of the new wave of coronavirus scams and hearing from readers whose lives have been turned upside down – through the loss of their savings, but also a sense of shame.

You can read Hilary’s article about the problem here.

Support The Guardian

The Guardian is editorially independent.
And we want to keep our journalism open and accessible to all.
But we increasingly need our readers to fund our work.

Support The Guardian