Martin Lewis issues urgent Amazon scam warning | Personal Finance | Finance
Martin Lewis has warned that “anyone” can be affected by scams as he spoke out about allegedly being targeted himself. The MoneySavingExpert.com founder is a leading voice in the fighting against fraudsters trying to dupe Britons online, and has even had to alert fans about devious money-making schemes pretending to be him.
But Mr Lewis says even he isn’t immune to the ingenious tactics scammers employ, claiming that he was nearly caught out. In a post on X on Thursday, July 16, he said scams “can happen to anyone!”, adding: “I nearly got caught by one yesterday.” The personal finance guru, who shares advice on ITV and on his own podcasts, says he was in the studio when he “got a Whatsapp call from ‘Amazon'”. Mr Lewis said he had rushed into the studio and his brain was “elsewhere” at the time. He claimed a man on the phone asked him “‘had I ordered a new iPhone?’ as they had reports of suspected fraud”.
Mr Lewis said he hadn’t. He claims the man told him to cancel it and told him he had sent over a six-digit code to reply to.
“I was feeling rushed and pressured, as the team needed to record, but finally enough of my brain turned onto the call and alarm bells started,” he added.
“I said I wanted to first check that this call was legit. He got pushy and said if I didn’t send the code he wouldn’t stop the iPhone being sent. This felt wrong to me… why would he want to risk sending a high value item, if the customer says it wasn’t ordered.”
Mr Lewis then wrote: “So while talking & prepping the podcast, I managed to search the telephone number and yes, it was a recognised ‘Amazon scam number.'”
He claimed that had he replied with the code “he would have then asked for further details and that would’ve started the data mine”.
“Of course, by answering (not something I normally do to unknown numbers, but did by reflex) I did inadvertently confirm that my number is a real one, so I’ll have to cope with that,” he added.
Mr Lewis said the “real lesson” was “how sophisticated and plausible it was”.
“And even though I’m obviously hyper-alert to scams as my face is in half of them, catch someone at the wrong time, when they’re not paying attention, and anyone can be caught out!”
On its website, Amazon tells customers who have received a “suspicious email, call, or message claiming to be from Amazon” to “verify it before taking action”.
It asks people to forward the message verify@amazon.com, or submit it on their website.
Meanwhile, if you’ve received suspicious communication claiming to be from Amazon and you don’t have an account with them where you can check, you can report it at reportascam@amazon.com.
Amazon, which is among the many major platforms that scammers attempt to impersonate, identifies Scam trends to help keep customers aware of the tactics being used by scammers.
