Woman lost life-savings 'after Amazon account hacked by thief who spent £4,500 on her card'

A woman claims to have lost her life savings when 'hackers accessed her Amazon account and bought almost £4,500 worth of goods on her card'.

Artist Sarah Brown claims she has been treated "appallingly" by both Barclays Bank and the online retailer after her account was targeted by fraudsters.

The 51-year-old, from Lower Compton, Plymouth says she asked Amazon to suspend her account a week before a hefty sum was deducted because she had noticed fraudulent activity.

But the company allegedly failed to act on her request.

Amazon said it has now refunded the money Miss Brown lost, although she has been unable to verify this as she has not yet spoken to her bank.

More than a month ago Miss Brown was notified that "someone tried to purchase something" from her Amazon account and she says she called the company to have it suspended.

Five days later Miss Brown says she called again 'to check it had been closed' but was informed it was still active.

She then says she requested it was suspended again.

In total, Miss Brown says she made five attempts to close her account before she lost her life savings.

She told the Plymouth Herald : "On January 16, money was moved by a fraudster from my savings account to my current account via telephone banking.

"This was for £5,000."

She said how she started to notice she wasn't receiving emails, which prompted her to contact Virgin, her internet supplier.

She said: "Eventually I found that my emails were being redirected to 'westham dogs' an email account I had never heard of.

"Around this time, before all my emails disappeared, I received emails from Amazon to say there had been some activity on my account and I started to get the odd refund of £1 here and there.

"I rang Amazon and asked them to freeze any activity on my account which they failed to do. Rather they kept my account open despite five attempts to get it closed."

On January 17, Miss Brown said four transactions were processed on her account for: £434, £304, £294 and £3,292.

The purchases included a vacuum cleaner, MamaRoo Rocker, Macbook Pro, Macbook and an Xbox and were delivered to an address in Hornchurch in East London.

Miss Brown said that "some subsequent transactions were made after this for low amounts of money".

She added: "The bank has declined to cover me for the fraud and will give no explanation as to why.

"Amazon have been completely useless in their customer care keeping me hanging on the phone for hours with no resolution.

"Likewise, it took me two hours of hanging on the phone the other day to get to anyone in Barclays who would speak to me about my case.

"This is standard procedure and Barclays have shown appalling customer care. I have been with them for nearly 30 years and have never been as much as overdrawn."

Miss Brown, has chronic fatigue syndrome, general anxiety disorder, and chronic insomnia.

She says that the stress of the situation has had a "huge impact" on her health.

"I have hardly slept in weeks and my fatigue and anxiety has increased immensly.

"I am unable to use my bank accounts unless I physically go into the branch and this increases my fatigue."

Amazon, said Miss Brown has been refunded in full.

A spokesperson for the company said that from time to time, "customers may receive emails appearing to come from Amazon, which are actually false emails", sometimes called 'spoof' or 'phishing' emails.

They added: "These can look similar to real Amazon emails but often direct the recipient to a false website where they might be asked to provide account information such as their email address and password combination.

"The best way to ensure that you do not respond to a false or phishing email is to always go directly to your account on Amazon to review or make any changes to your orders or your account. "

Miss Brown was unhappy with her bank after she had been told she would be refunded with the money straight away - but later found out that this would not be happening.

She added: "Barclays gave me misinformation, I was told I'd get the money back the next day but they decided that I wasn't getting that back.

"I have never been told why, it's impacted massively on my health."

A spokesperson for Barclays said: “Keeping customers secure is our top priority, as such, when we are alerted to any fraudulent activity on a customers’ account, we will investigate as a matter of urgency.

"These are often complex cases which take time to unravel, as in this case, and we have apologised to our customer for our service on this occasion.

"We are committed to protecting our customers and have invested significantly in anti-scam initiatives.

"As part of this we have worked hard to educate not just Barclays customers but everyone about how they can keep themselves safe, launching a national TV advertising campaign and a dedicated website with tips and tools.

"We are also committed to working together with other banks, payment providers, police, wider law enforcement and regulators to bear down on both scams and fraud such as this."