SCAMMERS WEREN'T SMART
‘The imposter was with her daughter… but mine is dead’: Gloria Hunniford opens up about life savings robbery
Loose Women star revealed her pain after £120k was stolen from her savings account
GLORIA Hunniford has slammed Santander bank after her £120, 000 life savings were stolen by an imposter.
The star – who ironically hosts shows called Rip Off Britain – also hit out at the scammers for not even being smart about what they were doing as they wrongly pretended one of them was Gloria's daughter.
However Gloria’s daughter Caron died in 2004 after a seven year long battle with cancer.
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Last week it was revealed that a Gloria ‘look-a-like’ walked into a bank with a woman pretending to her daughter and duped a cashier into adding her teenage grandson as a signatory because she had been ill.
Speaking about the incident for the first time on Loose Women, the 76-year-old said: “Now as a scam, I know that the scammers are very, very clever these days but you know the thing is – she said her daughter was with her and sadly I don’t have my daughter any more.
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“If she was going to scam and try and look like me she should have a wig that looks this colour. So I don’t understand any of it.”
Venting her frustration that the woman was able to access the money so easily, she said: “It’s easier for four strangers to go into the bank and get my money and get it all signed over to them and when I ring through I have to answer about eight or nine really obscure security questions.”
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Gloria, who admitted that the whole thing is rather ironic considering the shows she works on, said that her case was different to ones you normally see on TV.
“In my case I am sitting with my money in a sealed off savings account and it hasn’t been touch for nearly two years,” she said.
“I get a call from the bank one day and bearing in mind there is nothing I could have done about that, it was safely tucked away – as I thought.”
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However it wasn’t her own bank who first discovered there was an issue - it was the bank of the boy posing as her grandson.
“It wasn’t even Santander who called me – it was the bank of this boy who said he doesn’t normally have this amount of money and then they alerted Santander who then alerted me.
She added: “In all fairness they gave it all back.”
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Concluding she revealed she no longer trusts her bank – telling the Loose ladies: “Banks will have to up their security tactics. They have nothing to give you these days – the only thing they have to offer is trustability, safety and the knowledge you can trust your bank.
“I am afraid that from my point of view I have lost all faith in banks because there is nothing I can do about this.”
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Police are still hunting for the “look-a-like” and her “daughter'” while stand-in grandson Alan Dowie, 18, faces jail.
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