More and more Romanians fall victim to more and more sophisticated frauds. Through the series “Protect yours”, we want to show how these digital traps work through real testimonies, to explore what mistakes we make without realizing it and, especially, how we can avoid such situations. With the help of tools like Call monitor and Help Momdeveloped by Salt Bank, you can always be one step ahead of the scams for both you and your loved ones around you.
I started coming to Vama Veche with the tent from 16, and for about ten years I have been drawing in the same campsite. There is nothing fancy, but it has clean showers, a courtyard courtyard and especially Liana*. Tanti Liana is customs for me. Pescăriță from Mangalia, with a thick laugh and sharp tongue, makes your coffee at the Iberian and argues you for various fictitious reasons. It has passed 70, I think, but it's more sprinting than me in the morning. And yet I had a shock I see for the first time crying because of a scam.
One morning, instead of the usual coffee, I found Tanti Liana with red eyes and flying hair. It was something his uneasy, but I didn't dare ask to directly. But I made a ness in the envelope and listened:
“Yes, yes, I will solve … just tell me where … Well I can come to Constanta … No, no, I don't say I don't give me … give me five minutes.”
I saw her talking with a grandson from their camping house, showing her something on the phone, then sat on the bench broken by sadness and pale. I came to her to ask what happened and if I can help her with something.
She had received a phone call from someone who said Mihai was named and that she was a good friend with Dragoș*, her son. He told him they were involved in an accident somewhere near Fetești. He told him that Dragoș is admitted to the hospital in Constanța, he has open foot fracture and that things are serious. And he told him that he should have 4500 lei urgently to “solve with the doctor and the nurses”, otherwise he puts it in operation only in a week. Aunt Liana immediately panicked. He asked why the boy did not sound directly. It was replied that he is sedated, that he has the pain in pain and that he was asked by the hospital to contact him.
I told him to try to ring, however, on Dragoș's phone, but he really sounded like the phone was closed. She took her husband the car from the yard and started to Constanța and I saw her only the next day, when she told me the denouement.
Fortunately for her, Tanti Liana only worked with cash in camping, so she had only 1100 lei. The nephew helped to transfer the money to the indicated account from the phone and got in the car to Constanța with the rest of the cash. When he got there neither Mihai, no trace of Dragoș in the hospital, but he was still worried, because we all know how it is in emergencies, it's hard to find someone by name.
As he was there, he started to sound desperate to Dragoș's friends, including a former girlfriend. She started to cry originally and say she was coming to the hospital. He closed, but called Tanti Liana immediately: “You see lady that Dragoș just posted Story on Instagram from Krapets, is with the tent in the forest, near the beach.” He returned to the customs, still anxious that he could not give him or by scam.
It turned out that Dragoș was in that wilder part of Krapets, the Bulgarian resort, where you have a bad signal on some networks. Dragoș called her back after about two hours, when she arrived at the restaurant, where she had a signal, and Tanti Liana almost mournful through camping.
The husband took her to the police to file a complaint afterwards, where she was told that she was lucky, that some lose their savings like that, but she still cried for the 1100 lei lost and had the whole campsite for about two days. Funny is that she was crying more to frustrate that she was fooled: “20 years old I thought all the spikes who stayed in the tent of two or run in the morning before paying and now look how this mock me!”
Help Mom From Salt Bank is a specially created service to return the care and protection received from their parents, helping the children who become adults to protect their parents from the financial fraud attempts. The functionality allows users to designate a trusted person – a “protector” – to approve the transfers that exceed an amount established together and the requests for visualization of the card data. At the same time, the service also protects the intimacy of the loved ones: “the protector” does not have access to the balance or complete history of the transactions of the protected person.
*Name have been changed to protect the identity of victims
Article supported by Salt Bank
