The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) is warning the public about websites advertising fake premium rate numbers for their cruelty line. The premium rate 0844 numbers advertised are designed to rack up a heavy bill for the caller and are give a false impression that they’re affiliated with the charity.
The RSPCA said when a member of the public dials the fake number they’ll be charged a premium rate and are then diverted to their National Control Centre. This means the caller may not be immediately aware of the scam.
The correct number to report 24-hour cruelty to the RSPCA is 0300 1234 999. The call will cost the same as any call to a UK landline number. The charity did a search on Google and found eight scam sites with the incorrect 0844 premium rate numbers in the first ten pages of Google.
Separately, the official UK reporting line for fraud cases, Action Fraud, reports that fraudsters have been setting up fake adverts on social media (including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) and job browsing websites to dupe people into believing they are recruiting for prospective models. Once a victim shows interest in the modelling jobs, fraudsters contact victims on the false promise of a career and ask them to come in for a test photo shoot. The fraud is then carried out in two ways;
Either fraudsters pressurise victims into sending an upfront fee to book a slot for the test shoot. Once they have received the upfront fee, the victim will never hear from the fraudsters again. Or fraudsters will take the advance fee that the victim sends for a photo shoot and arrange a photo shoot with the victim. After the photo shoot, the fraudsters will contact the victim after a few days and convince them that their shoot was successful and offer them a job as a model. The victim will then be asked to sign a contract and pay another upfront fee, usually to secure the modelling contract.
In August 2017 alone, 49 victims lost an average of £1,448 each to this type of advance fee fraud. You can report fraud online at https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/contact-us.
