A foreign number scam has swept Ireland, with scammers targeting Donegal over the past few days.
Mobile phone operators are urging customers to not answer calls from suspicious numbers following a stint of scams.
Many of these calls originate from Africa, with the prefix 00252 from Somalia and 00216 for Tunisia.
The scam, called Wangiri fraud, operates as so: generally they will ring your phone for a few seconds, and will expect you to call back. Upon calling back, they clear the user’s call credit and may make you rack up a massive monthly bill if on a bill-pay plan.
Numbers to be on the look out for are +252 70100074 and +252 99612249.
Kei Paterson from Dungloe was hit by the scam at the weekend, however luckily it peaked his suspicions and he did some research on the number instead of calling back immediately.
Speaking to Donegal Daily, Kei says “They just gave me one quick ring and then hung up. Thankfully I had the foresight to check the number before I called back. I’ve heard of a number of people in the area receiving the same calls but thankfully no one in the area has lost money to it”.
If the call is genuine, they will call back or leave a voicemail. If you assume it is a relative or friend calling from abroad, contact them on another medium such as Facebook to verify that it was them before calling back.
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