Phone thieves are impersonating gardaí in order to gain access to stolen phones and then attempt to steal funds from the owner's online accounts.
BreakingNews.ie understands that the group are stealing phones and calling the emergency contacts on the devices, or anyone who has attempted to contact the phone.
The scammers then say that they are calling from a Garda station and have a recovered phone they believed was stolen the night before.
They insist on talking to the owner of the phone, asking questions about what make and model it is, and it looks like, before asking for the phone password to prove the phone belongs to the person to whom they are talking.
If the victim becomes suspicious, the impersonating Garda offers to put them onto their “sergeant”, who then gives a name of a serving Garda.
Once they receive the phone’s password, the impersonators then say they will try the password in all the phones they have recovered and “call back in around 10 minutes” for the victim to arrange pickup at the Garda station if one of the phones indeed belong to them.
However, instead of calling the number back, the scammers immediately disable the phone’s ‘Find my iPhone’ feature, and begin transferring funds from the person’s bank account into their Revolut, and requesting money from people they recently sent money to, or who sent money to them, on the app.
When victims call back the number of the ‘Garda’ that called them, it goes straight to voicemail and a different name is given.
BreakingNews.ie understands that one victim’s Revolut transactions consisted of requests to various people for €20 and €50, numerous transferred funds from their bank account, and two transactions in a filling station in Dublin via Apple Pay.
It is not known whether the scammers are stealing the phones purely with the intention of stealing funds, or if they intend to also sell the phones when funds are depleted.
Gardaí told BreakingNews.ie that they will never contact a person to request this personal information over the phone and any such information should only be provided in person when the bona fides of the person making the request has been established.
A spokesperson said that the Garda would advise members of the public not to disclose their pin or any other sensitive information to any unknown party.
"If you have any doubt, ask them for their credentials and ring their local Garda station to verify. Do not ring a number given to you as being that Garda station. Go to the Garda website and look up contact details there."
