Fraudsters have stolen the savings that a grieving husband inherited from his wife, a murdered police community support officer, he has revealed.
The tricksters used a fake parcel-delivery text to target Paul James, whose wife Julia was killed last year as she walked her dog in woods near her home in Kent.
Killer Callum Wheeler, 22, who used a railway jack to beat Ms James to death, was jailed for life on Friday with a minimum term of 37 years.
Now her husband says criminals have emptied his bank account of the money he inherited after they tricked him to get his bank details via his phone and set up a payment.
“All I had was money from my beloved Julia James – she was taken from me and now this!!!” he wrote on Facebook.
He explained: “I have been a victim of a scammer that sent a text regarding my parcel… they contacted me and accessed my phone, they changed their number to match the bank’s details…
“They have then emptied my bank account – they were extremely clever & convincing & had all my information & had also set up a false payment on my account so I was aware to contact the bank about it.
“All I had was money from my beloved Julia James, she was taken from me and now this!!!”
“Please be vigilant on your phones and what you respond to,” he added.
He said he was “going through all the right channels” to report the scam to authorities.
Fraud by text message has soared in recent years. “Smishing” fraud, where texts purport to be from parcel and package delivery firms more than tripled compared at the end of last year compared with the final quarter of 2020, figures show.
Often the fake text messages claim a courier has been unable to make a delivery and ask for a fee or more details to rearrange delivery, linking to a fake website that collects personal and financial information.
Ms James, 53, a mother of two, “ran for her life” to escape her attacker and was chased before she was bludgeoned to death, Canterbury Crown Court heard earlier this year.
Wheeler’s “brutal and vicious” attack was sexually motivated, the judge said.
Ms James’s daughter Bethan Coles told how their mother’s murder had given the family a “life sentence”.
“To lose my own parent, the woman I loved the most in the world, is truly awful,” she said. “To know how she was brutally attacked in broad daylight having run for her life is horrific.
“It haunts me every day of my life.”
Mr James repeatedly broke down in tears in court, saying: “My hopes and dreams were taken. I actually felt I died too.”
