It’s not often we hear of how the rich are conned, but a revealing blog post from Sir Richard Branson gives us some insight into how it might go down when they are the targets.

Speaking about two separate scams, Branson detailed how the first happened around six months ago and involved a convincing conman “posing as Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon”.

He explained how his assistant had “received a written note on what appeared to be official Government paper purporting to be from Sir Michael, claiming that a British diplomat had been kidnapped,” reports BBC.

[The] conman, who “sounded exactly like Sir Michael” during a phone call, said UK laws prevented the Government paying a ransom and claimed he was now asking a syndicate of wealthy businesspeople to foot the bill.

The scammers asked Sir Richard to cough up $5m (R67,8 million).

However, the ever-cautious Virgin Group founder called Sir Michael’s office immediately, as one should in these suspicious circumstances:

“I rang Downing Street and asked to be put through to Sir Michael’s office. His secretary assured me that Sir Michael hadn’t spoken to me and that nobody had been kidnapped,” he wrote.

But it’s the second con that has Branson concerned.

Posing as Branson, someone managed to swindle a friend of the real Branson – “a very successful businessperson” – out of $2m (R27,1 million):

They managed to rip off the fellow businessperson after they claimed the money would go towards helping people in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) following Hurricane Irma.

Sir Richard said: “As I got back online for the first time after the devastating Hurricane Irma in the British Virgin Islands, I received an email from a friend in the US.

“A very successful businessperson, they asked me when I would be returning the three week loan I had asked for to help the BVI communities. I had no idea what they were talking about.”

“When the call happened the conman did an extremely accurate impression of me and spun a big lie about urgently needing a loan while I was trying to mobilise aid in the BVI,” Sir Richard wrote.

The main reason for Branson’s blog post was to call on anyone with information to contact US police or his own “Heist Team”, created to track down the conmen.

You can read his full blog posts here, where he closed with this:

People used to raid banks and trains for smaller amounts – it’s frightening to think how easy it is becoming to pull off these crimes for larger amounts.

Oh, Branson.

[source:skynews]