Silent Crime: Newsreader Moira Stuart reveals she almost fell victim to fraudsters pretending to be from her bank

BBC legend Moira Stuart has revealed she fell victim to a sophisticated bank scam. 

The newsreader, familiar to millions for presenting bulletins on the BBC over three decades and who now works for Classic FM, said she was called by convincing fraudsters who told her they had discovered an “inside job at her bank”. During the 9am call the scammers kept her on the phone and told her that a crook had worked with staff at her local branch to steal some of her money.

Stuart was told to go to a different bank to fix the problem and said she was only rescued by a “gorgeous” cashier who quietly told her that it “didn't sound right”.

The 75-year-old said she felt “devastated, embarrassed and angry with myself” after nearly falling for the scam - and said she didn’t question it as she has an ex-directory phone number. 

Her story comes as NationalWorld has launched the Silent Crime campaign to highlight unreported and under-investigated crime which can deeply affect people - whether this is nuisance, theft, shoplifting, fraud or other crimes that have a lower priority from the authorities.

Stuart said to The Times: “If you're very independent, as I am, it feels like you have let yourself down, your family, everyone who knows you. This feeling, this intrusion, it doesn't leave you. He said, ‘We're going to send this amount of money from your account and see what happens if they intercept it’.”  

Stuart decided to talk about her experience to prevent others from falling foul of con artists, and from feeling shame of they do.

She said: “What really concerns me is the people who end up depressed or worse because of fraud, who lose their life savings. You ­haven't spent your entire life scrimping and saving to make sure you can look after your kids and your grandchildren just to have it stolen from you by some no-good idiot.”

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APP fraud - in which people are tricked into sending a payment to someone who is not who they claim to be - for the first half of 2023 was up by 22 per cent amounting to losses of almost £240 million.

Fraudsters may pose as the victim's bank, or even members of their family. The key to this scam is that the victim has 'authorised' the payment and voluntarily transfers the money.