Episode 16 Rip Off Britain

We asked you to tell us what's left you feeling ripped off,

and you contacted us in your thousands.

You've told us about the companies you think get it wrong

and the customer service that is simply not up to scratch.

When you have to call them, it takes ages and somebody else

answers the phone who pretty much doesn't know what you're saying.

The customer is not benefitting and, no, I'm not getting value for money.

You've asked us to track down the scammers who stole your money and

investigate the extra charges you say are unfair.

They don't deserve to be in any form of business whatsoever and they just

want shutting down.

And when you've lost out but nobody else is to blame,

you've come to us to stop others falling into the same trap.

They took the money out of my account and I don't even know who it was that was scamming me.

So, whether it's a blatant rip-off or a genuine mistake...

we're here to find out why you're out of pocket and what you can do about it.

Your stories, your money. This is Rip-Off Britain.

Hello and welcome once again to the Rip-Off Britain office where,

I have to say, today, the entire team has turned detective to try and get

to the bottom of cases that, when you first told us about them,

immediately it sounded very murky indeed,

even if it wasn't immediately clear what exactly was going on.

In fact, our initial instinct was that at the heart of

all of these stories was an out and out scam.

And while that's most definitely true of some of them, with the others,

well, things aren't quite that simple.

And even when it is clear that there's something distinctly dodgy going on,

unpicking exactly what has happened and why

has not been that easy, has it?

But we love a challenge here on Rip-Off Britain,

and some of the people in our stories today have lost a considerable amount of money.

So, as well as solving the mystery of how that happened,

we'll be making sure that you've got all the information you need to

avoid losing out in the same way.

Coming up - phantom postboxes mysteriously stuck to your home with

a sinister purpose.

They were hanging around in the area,

waiting for the post to be delivered

and were then going to remove the box.

And the job ads fleecing people desperate for work,

using actors to add a touch of credibility.

It's kind of embarrassing, you know, to be caught out like this,

and you feel kind of stupid, really.

You know, we've been doing this programme long enough for us to

think that there weren't too many types of scam we hadn't heard of before,

whether the fraudsters behind them were after your cash,

your personal details, or both.

But a few months ago, we came across something that is completely

new and indeed, dare I say it, quite extraordinarily inventive.

The barefaced cheek of it, I think, is going to take your breath away.

But when the residents affected

first noticed something very odd happening,

establishing exactly what was going on

raised more questions than answers.

A quiet, leafy suburb in Chorlton in Greater Manchester.

But behind these peaceful surroundings lurks a crime spree.

I'm mystified that anyone would think they could attach a postbox to

someone's house and get away with it.

No-one knows how many people have been affected or even how much money

may have been lost. In fact, one of the few things that is clear

about this most mysterious of scams is that whoever was behind it

had been watching the comings and goings on

these streets very carefully indeed,

in order to use the residents' identities for their own ends.

-Hello.

-Good to meet you. Come in.

-Thank you.

Alan Dunn was the first to notice that something was amiss when he

happened to be at home one afternoon.

Alan, could you start by telling me

when you realised something was going on?

My daughter had been out for lunch and she came back after about an

hour, and as she walked up the path,

there was somebody stood on the doorstep and she said,

"Oh, can I help you?" And he said, "Oh, I'm sorry,

"I think I might be in the wrong place. Uh..."

And left quite quickly.

Alan's suspicions were aroused and he popped outside to take a look,

and immediately noticed that a small black letterbox had been stuck to

the outside of his house.

Baffled as to where it had come from and why,

Alan prised the letterbox away from the wall and took it inside.

He soon discovered that the postman had dropped the family's mail for

the day inside the new box, rather than,

as usual, through the letterbox on the front door,

and amongst that mail was something very odd indeed.

What sort of letters were they?

It was a letter from the TSB saying

I'd opened a new account with them

and I had negotiated an overdraft for £1,000.

Neither Alan nor his partner Linda banks with TSB,

and they knew for sure they hadn't opened a new account there.

Putting two and two together,

they deduced that Alan's identity had most likely been stolen and the

crooks behind it had applied to borrow money in his name.

But of course, they couldn't activate the account or spend the overdraft

without the cards, paperwork and PIN number

that would all be sent through the post.

So they'd added their own postbox to make sure they could get

their hands on what they needed.

At that moment, we realised that the letterbox had been put up to

intercept the mail.

In that letterbox, we had a confirmation letter and the online

PIN number for internet banking,

and we imagine that the person that Bethan encountered on the doorstep

was probably in the process of retrieving the mail at that moment,

-so she spooked him.

-How did you feel when you realised

you'd come very close to being scammed?

Well, I was quite relieved in a way that we'd stopped it happening.

They obviously knew the delivery times for the postman on that day.

It was a little window of an hour where they stick it up,

and the postman was still in the street as they are retrieving it.

They're following him round, almost, retrieving the mail.

Realising that, by chance, they'd stopped a crime in its tracks,

they called the police.

The police didn't accept it was a crime at all.

She was just saying perhaps the box has been put on the wrong house,

which is what we thought originally.

It was only when we rang back the next day and actually kind of

insisted, because I thought...

I'm not really expecting them to catch the person,

but I did want it logged in case anybody else rang up,

so they could see there was a pattern.

Did you have a word with the postman the next day and ask him about it?

I did, but actually it wasn't the same postman,

but I explained everything to him,

I even showed him the letterbox and said,

"Look, this is what was stuck up in our porch,"

and he took all that information back, and they distributed that

round the local postmen so they're aware of it as an issue.

As well as talking to the Post Office,

Alan and Linda contacted TSB.

They immediately put a stop on the account,

and assured us there was no way the account could be activated.

And though it was good news that the account had been shut down before

the fraudsters could rack up any debt in Alan's name,

the couple can't be certain that the fraudsters haven't used his details

to open other accounts.

But Linda and Alan weren't the only people that the scammers had in

their sights, because guess what?

Another box appeared round the corner just a couple of days later.

Retired university professor Harold Somers lives one street away from

Alan and Linda, and he too had initially been confused to find one

of the strange and scruffily numbered letterboxes

outside his house.

It was Saturday afternoon and I was on my way out

to an important show that we were doing that evening with my band,

and as I went out the door, I noticed, stuck to the wall,

was this metal postbox that I'd never seen before,

and it had a crudely painted house number on it,

so my first instinct was that perhaps it had been put there

by mistake and delivery people had installed it in the wrong house.

Hoping to find out who the box really belonged to,

Harold took to his local community's Facebook page, where he learned the

same thing had happened to Alan and Linda.

I was a bit worried that taking it down might damage the wall,

because I had assumed it was screwed onto the wall,

and I couldn't get inside it to unscrew it.

And they said, "Oh, just pull it off,

"get it off under any way possible."

Did you contact the police?

Yes, I did report it to the police.

They were more concerned with me reporting it

as a potential identity theft.

They gave me the number of Action Fraud to call.

And how do you feel about it now?

I'm mystified that...

anyone would think they could attach a postbox

to someone's house and get away with it without anyone noticing,

except that, I suppose, and this is the scary bit,

what I suppose is that they were hanging around in the area,

waiting for the post to be delivered

and were then going to remove the box, almost as quickly as they'd

attached it, with the stolen mail inside it.

Harold's been on the lookout for any signs that his identity may have

been stolen, but so far nothing has come to light,

and no bank cards or PIN numbers have been delivered.

Imagine if we'd been on holiday.

They would have had two weeks' worth of post being delivered into this box.

Well, you were lucky, Alan and Linda were lucky,

but it could have so easily been more serious.

Tony Blake is a fraud prevention specialist who says that,

though the goings-on in Chorlton are relatively new,

they're certainly not isolated.

The fraudsters may target some particular area

because they have customer information from somewhere.

They may target a particular area

because they feel it's more affluent than others.

The numbers that I'm aware of are very low for this type of crime,

but it's something we're definitely keeping an eye on.

It's an evolution of a crime that, in the past,

has targeted blocks of flats

which have letterboxes in one communal area.

There's been student properties where people's identities have been

stolen and, again, communal areas where mail is just left around.

Fraudsters are making applications for products,

whether it be an account or a loan or something similar,

in someone else's name,

and they're having the mail sent to the genuine person's address.

Now, they need to intercept that mail before the genuine customer

even sees it.

The crooks behind this new version of the scam are taking a much

riskier approach by targeting suburban streets

rather than blocks of flats.

There is a risk to doing it, but the rewards are potentially high.

You take out a loan for a few thousand pounds,

then the rewards are quite high,

so they see it that the risks are worth taking.

And, of course, by the time Alan and Harold came across those postboxes,

it was clear that at least some of their personal details had already

been exploited by the fraudsters.

So, while it's not clear exactly how that happened, for Tony,

it's a reminder of how vigilant we all need to be.

People need to be very, very careful how they put their information

out there and protect their own identity.

Back in Chorlton, it seems the scammers have moved on to pastures new.

But it's worth keeping an eye out in case a mysterious postbox suddenly

appears outside your door or on your street,

which is what Harold and his neighbours will be doing in future.

I'm just reassured that it's the kind of good old-fashioned

neighbourhood where a lot of people know each other by name so, yes,

I think the general awareness has

been raised and people are watching out for each other, certainly.

I think all of us know that applying for a job can be a pretty

nerve-racking process at the best of times,

and if it's a job that you really want,

you are most likely going to put your heart and soul into the application,

and, of course, into the interview.

If you're not successful

then usually the only thing that's damaged is your pride,

but I'm afraid we're hearing more and more about an increasing

number of job opportunities that turn out to be entirely bogus,

and the people who've gone for them, who are desperate to earn money,

have instead been tricked into losing it.

'Jobs board.'

For the 1.7 million unemployed people in Britain,

job ads like these can be familiar reading.

And for Debbie Cordis, they were very familiar indeed.

After taking voluntary redundancy from her previous job,

Debbie had been searching online for vacancies for months when she came

across one that sounded ideal.

What was it that you saw there that made you feel,

"This is a job that I'd like to apply for"?

Well, the website looked quite professional,

and also they had a YouTube video as well with a guy that said he worked

for the recruitment for the company.

The ad was posted by a job agency called Madeem Recruit,

which was hiring on behalf of a clothing company based in central London.

And here's the man Debbie saw in the video.

We require customer service reps with no experience required...

After applying for the job,

Debbie was over the moon

when Madeem Recruit asked her to do a phone interview.

What sort of questions did he ask and how did the interview go?

Just quite basic questions, like did I have data entry experience,

and was I computer literate.

No alarm bells went that maybe this was something that wasn't quite kosher?

-Not at that time.

-No.

The interview went so well that, four days later,

Debbie was told she'd got the job

and would be working in the company's warehouse.

But before she could start,

she needed to send the job agency

scans of her passport and National Insurance card

and, or so it was claimed, undergo a criminal records check,

and to cover all of that, she'd have to pay almost £100.

Did you have £100?

Because presumably at that point you were unemployed.

Yeah, yeah. I was a little worried,

but at that time I really wanted a job, so...

you know, I really wanted to start as soon as possible.

But once she'd paid that money,

the recruitment company was in no hurry to firm up the details of when

she'd actually start,

and a whole month passed with still no start date.

Growing suspicious, Debbie searched online to see if anyone else

had experienced problems with Madeem Recruit,

and to her horror it quickly became clear

that the whole operation was a scam.

The agency was claiming to offer jobs with real companies,

but rather than genuinely placing anyone there,

it seemed to have simply been pocketing the cash from that £100 charge.

So what did you do when you realised you'd been a victim of scam?

I immediately got on to my bank and told them,

just in case they could use any of my bank details,

and I got on to the Passport Office

and I told them what happened so that I could get a new passport.

That was about £100.

So you're now £200 out of pocket.

-Yeah, yeah.

-And what did you feel at the end of all of this?

Um, well, it was very stressful at the time,

and it's kind of embarrassing,

you know, you feel kind of stupid, really.

Of course, the scammers have a copy of Debbie's old passport and her

National Insurance number, so she's worried they know enough

about her to use her identity illegally,

and she's had to contact credit agencies and the police for help.

When we contacted Madeem Recruit, perhaps unsurprisingly,

the company didn't respond.

But sadly we hear stories like Debbie's all the time,

and the number of fraudulent job ads is rising so fast that a voluntary

organisation called Safer Jobs has been set up to work with

the City of London Police in cracking down on them.

Keith Rosser is its chairman.

Presumably they're getting more and more clever at persuading you that

these are genuine advertisements.

Scammers now, more and more, are using real company logos and brands.

The other thing they're doing to add legitimacy to this scam is they're

even introducing third parties.

So they're saying to job-seekers, "You've been offered a job,

"now contact this organisation to get some background checks done on you,"

and it makes it look even more like it's genuine to the job-seeker.

How big is the problem of online scammers?

Well, we currently get in the region of 70,000 people

to our site a month, looking for free advice,

and we receive five reports a day of potential fraud,

so we've seen a real growth in the last few years of online job scams,

and it's... All signs look like it's only going to increase.

As Debbie had discovered, what makes these scams so plausible

is that there's more to them than just fake adverts and e-mails -

she'd been through a phone interview as well.

And, of course, there'd been that video in which a man claiming to be

from the clothing company had talked about the job

that he was hoping to fill.

We need people to start pretty much...

well, straight away.

Now that's taking the scam to a higher level, isn't it,

because that's a full-blown video

supposedly from the man who is going to employ you.

That's right, it's legitimacy, that's what they're doing all the time is,

"How can we make this look more and more genuine?"

So what would happen next in this case is that the person would be

offered the job, they'd get their contract of employment and,

because of the immediate starts, there'll be saying,

"Pay for a police check," hence the job-seeker goes to them,

pays their £100. Of course, there is no police check.

Now, why would somebody put their face on this if this is a scam?

I suspect this person actually has been duped themselves and doesn't

realise they're part of facilitating a fraud,

otherwise it's slightly unusual

that a fraudster would make themselves so readily identifiable.

Well, we did our own digging into the man Debbie had seen.

Turns out he's an actor who, online,

offers his services to anyone who wants to hire him to record a video

testimonial for their company.

He'll happily provide a positive review for a product or,

as he did in the case of Madeem Recruit,

pretend to be a manager looking for new employees.

In fact, on this web page where he sells his acting services,

he calls himself Yoogle.

Hello there, I'm Yoogle, and...

But here he's Richard.

My name is Richard Turner.

And for less than £20, he'll record anyone a video testimonial,

bestowing the virtues of pretty much anything.

I'm offering a 40-word video testimonial,

or a voiceover, to promote your product, your service,

your website or anything else that you want to promote.

We dropped Yoogle - or is it Richard? - a line,

and asked if he knew that

when he recorded the videos for Madeem Recruit,

he was helping the perpetrators of a scam.

It turns out his name is David.

He told us he provides acting services for many, many clients

and that he simply gets sent the script and performs it.

He went on to insist that he had absolutely no idea

that this was a scam

and he wouldn't have done the video if he had known.

We also contacted the clothing company

that David claimed to represent,

which is a genuine, successful company.

The owners stressed they have nothing to do with Madeem Recruit,

and say that they feel like victims of the scam, too.

They've even had people turning up at their premises to start jobs

that simply don't exist.

But it's perhaps no surprise

that they too were fooled by Madeem Recruit,

because the agency's website is full of glowing references

and testimonials from supposedly satisfied customers,

all of which add another level of credibility to the scam.

You probably won't be surprised to find out that they're fake, too.

I'm going to give you a natural-looking video testimonial.

And we found at least two of the people

who recorded videos for Madeem Recruit

also offering to record testimonials and fake reviews

for anything, for the princely sum of 5.

If you want a natural, high-quality testimonial review or any other kind

of promotional video, look no further.

It's all designed to make Madeem Recruit

and the jobs they're advertising

look like the real thing.

When we contacted the two actors in these videos,

one chose not to comment and the other simply said,

"Yes, I am a paid actor for that testimonial."

The credibility that these fake testimonials add

is just one reason why the number of job scams

we hear about is on the rise.

But according to Trading Standards National Scambuster Team,

the cases that get reported are just the tip of the iceberg.

This is a growing problem in that we've received several hundred

complaints over the last four or five months.

Clearly a fraud is being perpetrated on these people, in that

they're being offered jobs which simply don't exist.

The team's investigations have revealed links to

sophisticated organised crime networks

making a lot of money out of eager job-hunters.

We've executed a number of warrants on individuals who we believe are

associated with it.

We're aware that some bank accounts that have been used have been taking

between £3,000 and £6,000 a week,

so a bank account is usually operational

for between two and four weeks before it is shut down,

but within that period there could be £20,000 or £30,000 through that

bank account and off to a third-party account.

And to make it more difficult to catch them,

the fraudsters move around the country using the same scam.

What appears to be happening is that they're setting up a number of

different companies offering different jobs.

So, for example, they'll target Liverpool one week

and then they might target Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham,

to avoid people becoming too aware of a scam taking place

in a particular area.

To avoid being taken in,

Keith Rosser from Safer Jobs says it's crucial that job-seekers

watch out for the telltale signs that an ad may be a scam.

What can be done to set the alarm bells ringing that tells you that

perhaps this is not a genuine job application?

So, for all job-seekers,

what we would say is always run a few basic tests -

check the quality and grammar of the job advert

and any subsequent e-mails or contacts you have.

Always check the e-mail addresses that they're coming from.

Does it look like a bona fide company address?

If this company purports to be a well-known retail brand,

check them out online and call their head office

and check they are recruiting.

If it's an unknown company, always do your research online -

find out if the company exists, check with Companies House.

What we'd say to all job-seekers is Safer Jobs,

which is a non-profit organisation set up by the police,

offers free advice to any job-seeker.

One of the things that Safer Jobs does is it partners

with most of the big job boards to share information about fake jobs,

to make sure that all those job boards then remove it from their site.

Fraudsters are known to pose as recruiters, not just for local jobs,

but for some very big multinational firms.

Petroleum giant Shell and one of the world's largest mining companies,

AngloAmerican, are among those whose names have been hijacked.

Back in Harrow, Debbie knows now to be much more wary of any supposed

recruitment agency that asks you

to pay upfront for any of its services.

Debbie, what do you think you've learnt from this experience?

Erm, not to take things at face value and also, like,

when anybody's asking, you know,

for payment for anything to always check it, especially, you know,

with looking for a job.

Still to come on Rip-Off Britain -

a spate of mystery phone calls

racking up high charges in the middle of the night.

So, who made them and why?

When I saw the times on the bill,

I just could not believe it because they were outrageous times and on

Christmas Day as well, early hours of the morning.

This year the Rip-Off Britain team

worked through the night to get ready for our annual

consumer advice clinic in one of the UK's busiest shopping centres.

We were setting up right in the thick of it all...

..to create an open-plan pop-up shop,

very different from any we've opened up before.

We've been absolutely thrilled by the number of people

who've been passing by and then just popped in to talk

to our many experts and try and get

their consumer problems sorted,

and it's been terrific for me, for Gloria and for Julia as well,

because it's our opportunity to meet you, our viewers.

One of those calling in for help was Trish, who wanted advice

on finding a long-lost pension.

Last year when I was 68, I retired,

and when I went through some old papers,

I found this letter dated 1968

offering me a job in an insurance broker's in Leeds.

It sets out the terms and conditions quite clearly,

and one of those terms and conditions is that I would be

required to join the staff contributory pension fund.

So I thought, "That's very interesting,

"I'll see what happened to my contributions."

And there the fun began.

So far, unpicking what happened to the pension contributions Trish

had made in the five years she worked there has proved impossible.

I e-mailed the government's pension tracing service.

They gave me the name of the company that

this company became, so I wrote to them, rang them.

They've not even acknowledged that I exist.

Do companies not have an obligation, a legal obligation,

to keep up-to-date records of everything that's happened?

I mean, if you talk to banks, they will say

there are some records they just don't have because they're so old.

There's an estimated one million unclaimed pensions in the UK,

worth around £4 billion.

It's supposed to be easier than ever to trace them,

but that has not been Trish's experience,

and for her, it's a matter of principle.

It's not the pot of money.

It's because no-one has given me any kind of answer.

It got me thinking.

There were thousands of women in my position

where there was a staff pension fund,

then they married, they left and had babies,

and none of us looked back to think,

"I wonder what's happening to my pension."

Now, under the rules that were around at the time,

it could be that when Trish left her job in 1974,

she was refunded the contributions that she'd made.

Basically, before 1975,

if you were a member of a workplace pension and then you left

after a few years,

it was likely that you would have just been given back the money

that you'd paid in and nothing else.

There wouldn't have been a pot of money growing with your name on it,

ready for you to claim when you retire.

But what's most frustrating for Trish

is that she hasn't been able to find out for sure.

It's just that no-one gives me an answer,

I think that's the problem.

As Trish can't seem to get any further,

Sarah's offered to do some detective work of her own.

I'll make a call this afternoon, actually,

and see if I can actually speak to somebody in the first place,

and we'll take it from there and find out

-what you may or may not have.

-That's great.

Following filming, Sarah did manage

to speak to the right person on this, and, as she suspected,

it turned out that Trish had been given the money way back in 1974,

and she was even able to track down

a letter spelling it all out in black and white.

So while there was no unclaimed pension,

Trish was thrilled to have the matter finally cleared up,

which was what she hoped for in the first place.

Meanwhile, over in our gripe corner, our complainers were in full swing.

I'm not happy with that still, because I think it's very unfair.

And rather than retail therapy, it was retail pain for some of them.

My biggest rip-off in Britain is the price of children's school shoes.

I pay more for their shoes than I pay for my shoes.

I buy a pair of trainers and it all comes up to about £100-odd.

It's hard to look fashionable when you can't afford it,

because it's pricey.

I like quality garments, obviously.

They look good but they don't last that very long.

And it's just difficult to find a cheaper option, really.

Back at our shop, solicitor Gary Rycroft

was ready for his next appointment,

and some of the group looked a little familiar.

We've met before, haven't we?

-We have.

-So, very nice to see you again.

Wendy and Mike had some help from Gary

at our pop-up shop in Liverpool in 2013.

It seems to me that the owner of the freehold is being a bit cheeky.

They acted on his advice with great results.

You gave us some ideas and we managed to sort it out

and we got all our money back, so it was a positive outcome.

-Brilliant.

-So, when a new problem with their property cropped up,

they were keen to see Gary again,

and this time they brought along neighbour Anna,

who is suffering with the same issue,

as indeed are plenty of others on the same development.

We started noticing mortar coming off the roofs

and coming on to the path,

so we were wondering what was happening.

The neighbours' roofs developed exactly the same fault

only a few years after the houses had been built.

So, Wendy called out the National House-Building Council, or NHBC,

to investigate.

At the point that the NHBC inspector came out,

he said a lot of the houses on the estate were starting to get this

problem, and he believed it was an inconsistency in the mortar that had

been put on the roof.

Anna had an inspector out, too, who spotted another fault.

There seemed to be a problem with the ridge tiles as well -

they were inferior quality. And so there were two main problems

that were going on here that they accepted.

Though the roofs were fixed on both Wendy and Anna's homes,

the problem soon returned, and, they say, by now

it was apparent that the recurring roof fault

was commonplace on the development.

What we found is that, across the estate,

different people had already had it repaired and then had had to

call them back a second time because they were having the same problem.

Four years on and the residents still have faulty roofs,

but Gary thinks there's mileage

in pushing the NHBC into further action.

You can escalate what's going on now into a complaint and actually say,

"Look, we're not happy with the way this is being dealt with on a piecemeal basis.

-"There is clearly an estate-wide issue here."

-Yeah.

With almost 400 properties on the estate,

Gary thinks it would help if the residents all joined forces on this.

But with many of the houses rented out,

Wendy hasn't been sure how she could get in touch

with the actual homeowners.

Luckily for her, Gary's got a tip to help.

The land registry will hold up-to-date information

about who owns all of the individuals properties

on your estate.

-Ah.

-Now, the land register is an open register...

-Right.

-..we can all apply to the land registry for a copy of the

-register...

-Right.

-The fee payable is £3 per property.

Gary also suggested some other avenues for them to try,

including the financial ombudsman service.

There's some practical points there and, hopefully,

like we did three years ago, we can solve this.

It's been a fantastic opportunity to come here today and we've learned an

awful lot and it's been really inspiring as well to hear a

professional point of view and advice on it.

So, hopefully we can go away and try those ideas and get a result.

And once we'd pulled down the shutters on this year's pop-up shop,

we got in touch with the NHBC.

It told us it's already assisted a number of homeowners on the estate

whose properties are covered by its build mark warranty and urged

any who still have concerns

to get in touch with its claims team directly

to ensure that they are getting the right support.

Next - a stressful situation that nobody wants to face -

trying to correct a bill that's many times higher than you were expecting

but you're getting nowhere trying to sort it all out.

Now, it happened to the people in our next film,

who found themselves with mobile phone bills showing huge charges for

hours and hours of phone calls that they're certain they didn't make.

But while they're sure it wasn't them,

proving who or what really did rack up such massive costs is actually

proving quite a battle.

Christmas Eve 2015.

She didn't know it yet, but for Claire Knifton from Burton-on-Trent,

the start of the festive season

also kicked off a mysterious set of events

that even now she can't explain,

all to do with her phone and some very odd calls

made in the middle of the night.

But it was a month later before

Claire realised that anything was wrong.

I'd gone out on my lunch break at work.

-Hello.

-Hiya. Pump number three, please.

I went to use the card and the lady said, "Sorry, your card's declined."

And I was like, "No, it's not, there definitely is money in there."

She says, "I'll try again," and she tried swiping it...

No, it's still having none of it.

So you can imagine the journey back to the office then was,

"Oh, my God, what's happened? Why have I got no money?"

Cos I knew that if my card had been declined then it must have

gone over my overdraft as well,

so it's got to be a large amount of money that's come out of my account.

Claire called her bank, who said that her latest mobile phone bill was for

a hefty £309, which would be a shock for anyone,

but particularly her, as she normally pays just £20 a month.

I was like, "Oh, my God, no way there...

"What could have gone out?"

So this is when alarm bells started ringing.

Assuming it was a mistake, Claire called her phone company,

which insisted that a series of calls had been made from her phone

throughout the night before Christmas,

all to the same very expensive 0843 number.

We've got one at 21.11 on Christmas Eve,

and then 23.11, as well on Christmas Eve,

so each phone call was £49,

£44, £44, £44.

£44, and then the last one was £30,

and it also gives you a service charge as well of £5.56 each time.

There was a total of six calls on the bill,

each starting at two-hourly intervals, with the last call at 5.11

on Christmas morning.

When I saw the times on the bill, I just could not believe it.

Anyone in their right mind that's ringing a premium number

for that amount of time on Christmas Day, you know,

it's a definite no-no. I wouldn't do that.

And when the number appears to belong to a PPI claims service,

it does seem especially unlikely that Claire would have

deliberately made those calls.

Now, she does recall seeing a missed call from that same 0843 number

during Christmas Eve,

but she's adamant that at the time the bill says she

was on the phone, she was either celebrating Christmas Eve

with her family or fast asleep in bed.

I was quite relieved, really, that it was on such a memorable day

that I knew exactly what I was doing.

I know for definite that that phone was on its own, on a charger,

in the bedroom all that time.

We've spoken to numerous people

who've been billed sizeable sums for calls

that they're sure that they've never made.

Even industry regulator Ofcom got involved to investigate what could

possibly have happened,

and plenty of newspapers have also picked up on what they call

a fake call scam with reports of dozens of people

who found themselves in the same situation...

including Oriel Ross Wardell from Hull,

who was charged £289 for a phone call

that she insists was made while

her phone was shut away in a drawer at home.

Gillian Innes, a care worker from Ripon,

received a bill for nearly £180, ten times her usual monthly charge,

following a call to an 0845 number that she too is sure she never made.

And Hazel Brown from Surrey,

who had three witnesses to prove she was not on the phone during

a seven-hour call that cost £211.

Well, it's not clear exactly what's gone on,

but one theory is that someone could be hiring out 0845 or 0843 numbers,

setting them up with high fees for incoming calls,

and then here's the clever bit,

very sneakily hacking into people's Smartphones and programming them to

automatically call back if there's

a missed call from their particular numbers.

Well, it's terrifying stuff,

but it isn't necessarily the explanation

for what happened to Claire.

To see if we could help shed any more light on the mystery,

we asked CCL Solutions,

a company that specialises in analysing the data on mobile phones,

to take a look at Claire's handset.

We can recover a whole range of information

about the usage of the phone,

the software installed on the phone,

deleted data as well.

So it helps us really build up a big picture of how the phone was being

used, and we can timeline events.

CCL put Claire's phone through a series of rigorous tests,

but there was no evidence it had been hacked by scammers or indeed

of any other rogue phone activity.

We didn't find any evidence that

there were any malicious applications on the phone,

so it's quite difficult to conclude why that call or those calls

were made, or indeed what made them.

Except the team did make a discovery that opens up another possibility.

The phone bill showed a series of two-hour calls,

whereas the phone itself showed a single call of 11 hours.

In other words, while the bill lists the calls as separate,

there may have been just one very long call,

which makes it more feasible that Claire might perhaps

have redialled the number of her missed call by mistake.

I think the fact that it was a single call

as opposed to multiple calls

makes it more likely that it was probably an accidental dial,

but if the user is confident that they did not make those calls

or that call, and we can't find any evidence

of any malicious applications or any malicious activity,

then I think it's safe to say it's a mystery.

But certainly, as far as Claire's phone company is concerned,

these situations generally are caused by...

It has confirmed, as our expert suspected,

that there was simply one 11-hour call made to that 0843 number,

explaining that the bill suggested otherwise

because the company's billing system refreshes

call records every two hours.

In common with other phone companies,

it regards the behaviour of whoever is making these missed calls as

fraudulent and actively blocks the numbers involved

as soon as it becomes aware of them.

So while it recommends caution when returning any missed calls

from a number you don't know,

in case it too has unexpected extra costs,

it has in this case refunded Claire the cost of the call.

Of course that's great news for her,

but there's one simple way anyone can ensure they're not landed with

unexpected sky-high bills,

whether it's because a scammer has got your number

or you've unwittingly made a call from your pocket.

Call your mobile phone service provider

and ask them to put a cap on your usage,

so that you don't get any surprises when the bill comes

at the end of the month.

If you have a story you'd like us to investigate,

then you can get in touch with us via our Facebook page...

Our website is...

Or you can e-mail us at...

And, of course, you can always send us a letter to our postal address...

You know something, I love a good old detective story,

and a lot of the e-mails and letters that you send us start in exactly

that way - with a situation that doesn't seem to make any sense

whatsoever, and you want us to help work out what exactly has gone on.

But sometimes, as we've seen, there is a reasonable explanation,

but in other cases those first impressions were totally correct

and it was really all down to an ingenious scam.

Well, the team here is always ready,

waiting and really eager to get stuck into even more of those

seemingly inexplicable situations,

so if you've lost out but can't for the life of you fathom out

what's happened, do let us know,

because even if we can't help get your money back,

we may at least be able to unravel the truth,

and, of course, that means that we can

stop others from falling into similar traps.

In the meantime,

we hope you've picked up some useful tips to help steer you well clear of

situations that either really are a scam

or simply look as if they might be.

But that's all we've got time for for today.

Thanks very much for joining us.

-Till the next time, from all of us here, goodbye.

-Goodbye.

-Bye-bye.