Slow progress

Today Smithers and I have been doing a vigorous deep clean of the garage, where every surface had been covered with concrete dust a few months back when we had some drilling work done on the floor. The storage racking, which had been full of cardstock, cleaning supplies, bulk bird food and useful empty boxes, was emptied and everything cleaned and replaced. Displacement activity — therapy — call it what you will. It was very satisfying. 

It’s going to take me a while to recover my emotional equilibrium from the events of the past couple of days, but I think I’m making some slow progress. I promise this is the last time I will mention it, but I want to emphasise just once more to my fellow blippers how sophisticated the recent scam was. If I can save just one person from going through what Smithers and I have just been through, I will be happy.

This particular crime was nearly successful because it involved someone managing to fraudulently steal a sum of money from my personal account via my debit card, then brazenly telephoning me to tell me about it, masquerading as a bank fraud employee, in order to try to scam a much larger amount from me when I was in a state of shock. A sprat to catch a mackerel, if you will.

Once I had seen for myself on my iPad that I had indeed had money stolen, the fraudster used the panic which that created to carefully manipulate me. I lost all my usual extreme caution and became desperate to secure my account as quickly as possible to prevent further loss. In that state I was as gullible as the next person, despite believing (erroneously as I now know) that I’m much more tech savvy than most people of my age. It was only by the grace of God that a huge sum of money was prevented from leaving our joint account under the fraudster's direction.

All I had to do was to ask the scammer to hold the line while I verified his identity before I took any action. As simple as that. But I didn’t.

Make sure you do, if you should ever be unfortunate enough for it to happen to you.