Helen has notified of us of some nasty scams that are doing the rounds.
Here are the summaries of what happens.
1. In some cases, people are being approached by a middle aged man who asks for money to pay for fuel on the pretext that he needs the fuel in an emergency to follow an ambulance that is taking his sick father to hospital. The man seemed very plausible and asked for the address of a donor so that he could return the money. However, multiple cases of this have been reported from Wilmslow and Sale.
2. The next scam involves a call from someone claiming to be from the Track and Trace service. The caller explains that you have been in contact with someone who has tested positive from Covid-19 and you are told that you must take a test and self-isolate for 7 days.
The caller refuses to give any information on the contact and pushes for you to be tested within 72 hours explaining that the best way to do this is to mail a test kit to you.
At that point, the caller starts asking for card details for payments, a one-off fee of £50.
In the case we heard of, the supposedly infected person refused to make a payment and then was told that there were penalties for non-compliance.
This, of course is a scam.
In all cases where you are not absolutely sure of the identity of a caller, please do not give them any information they might use to defraud you.