How I Lost £30k and Survived
Back in May 2025, I was falling apart and sobbing on my friend’s sofa.
I couldn’t comprehend what had happened or how I had come to be in this situation. What had I done to put myself on this path? I had clearly lost all ability to function as an adult in the world.
I had been the victim of a financial scam and defrauded out of £30,000.
This represented not only all of my personal savings, but also savings to pay my tax return with.
I was worried about paying my bills. I was terrified I wouldn’t get the money back. I was really afraid that I’d be blamed for my situation and that it was all my fault.
To make matters worse, 24 hours previously, I had lost my job. I was still reeling from that shock and the neurodivergent burnout that precipitated my drop in performance (and why I was susceptible to the scam in the first place), and now I was terrified of how desperate I’d be for work in a very competitive job market.
How else is a brain supposed to react to all of that? Total and complete shutdown.
The scam had been incredibly sophisticated. A legitimate fraud attempt had been made against my account a few days earlier, which I had dealt with appropriately directly with my bank and had cancelled my card. They then called me pretending to be from my bank.
When I received this call, my friend was at my house (the same friend I’d be sobbing on the sofa of the next day) and I had the phone on loudspeaker… because I’m one of those horrendous Millennials and it’s just what we do, ok? Now we met both studying for a PhD in astrophysics and now both work in the tech industry. We are smart and savvy women. She listened in to everything that went on during the call, and when I was given information or links to follow, she fact-checked and verified on her phone.
That’s how sophisticated the social engineering within this scam was.
I was told:
- My phone had been infected with a Pegasus virus (which is a real cyber threat and incredibly difficult to remove,1 but that I had been infected was a lie wrapped in truth)
- That I should submit a report to Action Fraud (which is a legitimate service for reporting fraud and cybercrime in the UK2), I was walked through this process by the scammers themselves
- That I would be contacted by an agent from FSCS, who two-factor authenticated with me to “prove his authenticity”
During the whole call, I was going around in a mental loop of: “What is happening? Well, we’re getting it sorted, you just have to be patient and not panic. Hmmmm, are we sure this is right?” I think my mental state with everything that had happened in the lead up to this is a key factor in why I was so susceptible to this. My self-confidence was shattered and I was constantly doubting myself.
And then my accounts were systematically drained.
This is when my friends really rallied around me. I was given enough cash to get me through the month, and support with the bank’s fraud process.
I don’t wish anyone to be in the situation that I was in. But if you are unlucky enough to find yourself in it, then the most useful piece of advice I can give you is to ask a friend to help you answer all the bank’s questions when you report the incident.
Banks will ask specific questions to ascertain whether you did all that was reasonably possible to keep your account secure. If you meet a certain threshold of due diligence, then the funds are returned to you using their fraud insurance. And if you can show that you are vulnerable, then this threshold is a little lower. And boy, had I been vulnerable. In fact, I was so vulnerable and broken by everything that had happened, that there wasn’t really anything left in me to advocate for myself.
This is why getting a friend to help you through this process is so important, in my opinion.
I dictated the whole ordeal to my friend (another smart and savvy woman - you’ve got to surround yourself with them) who took meticulous notes and presented the facts in response to the questions in such a way to demonstrate that I had practiced due diligence. She even thought to include the fact that I had taken cybersecurity training (because we had worked together) and point out how the behaviour of the scammers differed so largely from how we are trained to expect them to behave. (They kept me as calm as possible and on the phone for hours, as opposed to behaviours mentioned in training such as urgency and urging me to make quick decisions.) That was just not a connection that I would have been able to make in the state I was in and it was a huge burden off my shoulders for that to have been taken care of. All I had to do was paste the paragraphs into an email response.
It took a couple of weeks and some back and forth with the bank, but eventually all the transactions were refunded. I spent much of the summer in a shut-down stupor, trying to process everything that had happened, spending my days however I wanted, and not putting too much pressure on myself.
Eventually, I made myself a plan. I built a burn-down graph of my savings and decided the latest I wanted to be back in work, and when I should start applying for financial help if needed. I started spending time on my LinkedIn, CV, and website, as well as joining groups around job search strategies and support.
I paid off my tax return immediately.