OVER the past eight or nine months the housemate has had four calls from her bank reporting 'suspicious' activity on her account.

While she’s always been grateful for the vigilance of her bank, the drag of having to wait for a new card, change her numbers on various accounts and remember a new pin are a pain, especially for me as I always seem to get lumbered with the jobs.

“I don’t know why I keep getting caught,” she moaned as we waded our way through the process for the umpteenth time.

“I don’t use any dodgy websites and anything I buy on Amazon I use your account for,” she said, somewhat to my surprise.

“I know I’ve never lost any money but it does make you feel stupid when you keep getting caught out like this,” she added glumly.

Despite my reassurances that it was nothing that she was doing it wasn’t until my sister arrived home from her holiday across the Atlantic that her spirits lifted slightly.

“Can you believe we were scammed?” asked my sister as she modelled the designer jeans and boots she’d returned home laden with.

“We weren’t actually scammed,” chipped in the brother-in-law-to-be with a pained look.

“I think you’ll find it was you who was scammed,” he added with a disgruntled look.

“I’m using the ‘royal we’ because it was your money,” smiled my sister strutting her stuff in her new cowboy boots.

“I don’t think I can really be blamed,” she explained. “The man who phoned and said he was from my bank had all my personal details. He had my emailed address, my proper address, my account number, even the three digit number of the back of my card.

“So obviously I believed him when he said someone was trying to fraudulently get money from me…I just didn’t realise it was him,” she grimaced.

“The thing is that he didn’t actually take any money from her,” chipped in the brother-in-law-to-be.

“He ‘stopped’ the alleged theft from her account and then asked if there were any cards associated with that account so she gave him all my details…and the authorisation code number which had been texted to her phone which allowed him to spend £150 on a Shark vacuum cleaner!” he added rolling his eyes.

“He seemed very plausible,” said my sister sheepishly. “Even when he told me that the text from the vacuum cleaner company was from a holding company working for the petrol station we’d actually bought petrol from!”

“It wasn’t the best day of our holiday,” she added. “Especially as when we eventually left the apartment to go for a walk I stepped on a sachet of mustard which squirted all over the brother-in-law-to-be.”

I recount this take not just to humiliate my sister - although clearly that is part of it - but to add my voice to the constant torrent of warnings about how easy its is to fall foul of scammer and urge everyone to be extra cautious if you get any call purporting to be from your bank.

“I never thought I’d get caught out,” said my sister. “But this chap had every detail I would expect the bank to have. It wasn’t until I had a proper call from a chap at the bank…who I then thought was a scammer… that I realised I’d been had!”