Lincolnshire man loses life savings in online gift card scam

Graham Wynn sometimes spent £1,000 a time to buy the gift cards

A 75-year-old man with dementia had his life savings of £50,000 stolen in a gift card scam.

Graham Wynn from Lincolnshire was contacted by a "call centre" claiming he was due a refund of £20,000 on a PPI payment.

The fraudsters persuaded him to buy gift cards for Amazon and Google as a "commission" to release the repayment.

He read them the code numbers on the cards over the phone allowing them to steal their value.

Mr Wynn is warning other people not to fall for the scam.

"I was very gullible," he said.

"My brain had gone and I was actually believing them. I carried on sort of buying Amazon cards and things and all that for them like a blooming idiot."

'Not a penny left'

His son Ian Wynn said the scammers had gained his father's trust and "groomed" him and drained all his accounts.

"He gets upset when he realises that they have scammed him because of the mental weakness," he said.

"He'll go to sleep then in the morning he'll wake up and go 'Oh I must find out where my money is' forgetting everything that's happened, rings them and the whole cycle starts again.

"There is not a penny left in any of his accounts."

Amazon warned customers never to reveal the unique claim code on a gift card

He sometimes spent £1,000 a time buying the cards. Staff at stores tried to intervene and stop him from purchasing them.

Lincolnshire Police is investigating the case. Sgt Cherry Kelly from the Economic Crime Unit said cases like Mr Wynn's were "vastly underreported".

"I think the reasons for that is the fact that people don't initially realise that it's a scam that they are involved in and then when they do know, they're embarrassed about the fact they've been drawn into it, so they are failing to report it to us," she said.

Amazon said there was anti-scam information on its website and it warned customers never to reveal the unique claim code on a gift card

When contacted by the BBC by phone, the call centre denied operating a fraud and hung up.