In the past four months, PSP has received 1,205 complaints (1,244 in the last year) of “Hi Dad, Hello Mom” scams. Ten scammers a day. Three hundred a month. The victims were left without more than a million euros, found out in cm.
The scheme consists of suspects posing as children of the victims. Through messages from the WhatsApp application, they say that they either changed their mobile phone number or the previous one is broken, and after the messages, in order to gain the trust of the victim, they convince her to transfer money for urgent expenses. The PSP, which is celebrating Safer Internet Day today, says this scam is happening especially in urban areas.
In 2022, PSP registered over 11,200 computer scams (20% more than in 2021 and 60% more than in 2019).