The day began with a rant about the cost of Christmas. ‘Why do we need such a big turkey when there will only be six of us?’ I asked my wife. ‘Why a whole stilton when a half would do just as well? Why enough cooked ham to feed a football team?’
‘There’s no reason to be so grumpy,’ she replied, as I sat down in a sulk and started scrolling through Instagram. A few minutes later, Martin Lewis, host of ITV’s The Martin Lewis Money Show, popped up on my mobile screen and began talking about a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’.
For an initial investment of less than £200 I could make £800 or even £1,200 by the end of the day and possibly as much as £25,000 within a month. He appeared to say it involved a ‘quantum AI platform’ that worked automatically without any involvement from me.
I was all ears, especially since I was yet to pay our butcher for the turkey and ham – nor the local deli for that oversized stilton.
Then there would be a tax bill to settle by December 31, plus the car was due a service and I needed to pay the balance on a winter holiday.
Lewis has a way of speaking persuasively. He’s authoritative and always on the side of the consumer. On this occasion, he sounded particularly intense, particularly insistent.
‘Register today and your life could change for ever. One of my representatives will call you within ten minutes… you will be in a position to retire at the end of the year… The platform has undergone six months of testing and received a licence from the British Government… Buying a new car or home need no longer be a dream… This offer is not from scammers but from me, Martin Lewis.’
It never dawned on me that it was not the real Martin Lewis.
One of the fake ads of personal finance expert Martin Lewis circulating around social media
Mark Palmer, who almost fell foul of the AI-generated scam over the Christmas period
It was his voice and I felt reassured by the line about gaining a licence from the Government.
So I registered, giving my email address and mobile telephone number. Sure enough, my phone rang six minutes later and a polite man with an American accent introduced himself as Mario.
He asked me various questions, nothing too intrusive: my age, my rough annual income, my investment history. He was articulate and courteous.
‘Are you ready to make the payment of £194?’ he said.
‘Yes, absolutely,’ I said. ‘Thank you for making it such an easy process. I’ll pay with my American Express card if that’s OK with you.’ ‘That would be fine,’ he said.
He then sent an activation link, but it did not allow me to pay by American Express. I thought this was odd given that he had just assured me that it would be ‘fine’.
So I entered the details of my Cooperative Bank business account debit card. Within seconds, the bank – or, at least, someone claiming to be the bank – sent a text message saying the payment had been declined and that I should ‘confirm if this transaction was made by you by replying Yes or No’.
Call me naive, call me a Christmas Scrooge looking for an easy way out, but I replied with a Yes. My ‘bank’ then said I should wait five minutes and try again, before signing off with, ‘Thanks for using our fraud detection service.’
I see now this was all from the scammers, trying to give the whole process an air of legitimacy.
Then I received a text from my real Cooperative Bank, giving me a one-time password to make the transaction. A minute later, another legitimate text came through saying ‘this is a fraud alert’ – and only then did a red light began to flicker.
Meanwhile, Mario was still on the line, asking me if all was well and if I needed any further help in making the payment.
‘I’m fine for now,’ I told him. ‘Just need to check a couple of things.’
I then put Mario on hold and quickly googled ‘Martin Lewis scam’. First up was a message from Lewis’s Money Saving Expert website, saying that its founder’s face has been plastered over the internet for many years by ‘fraudsters looking to scam people out of money.’
It went on: ‘These ads, be they for cryptocurrency, investments, banks, are scams and not genuine. They’re dangerous and you should be on your guard. Martin never endorses products and nor does MSE – so don’t be fooled.’
Immediately I told Mario that I was taking our arrangement no further. He asked me to reconsider and I, for some absurd and uniquely British reason, found myself apologising to him and even wished him a Happy Christmas when I should have slammed down the phone.
I called my bank and made sure the payment had not gone through. As a precaution, it advised me to cancel the debit card and that a new one would be issued.
Which is an infernal pain because that card was the one I’d planned to use for buying the turkey, cheese and ham. But perhaps it’s no bad thing to have a wake-up call about the dark arts of artificial intelligence.
I have not lost any money – and have gained some long overdue intelligence about fake, get-rich-quick schemes.
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