I have visited Ilford high street and every time I visit it, I get a doggy feeling !

On 21st November 2012, when I was at work, I received a call from a friend of mine who seemed quite scared and shaky. She told me that she was on the Ilford high street and was trying to remove cash from an ATM when all of a sudden a black guy approached her calmly and told her that the ATM was not dispensing cash. He told her that if she wanted to dispense the cash she needed to enter the pasword thrice. In the meanwhile he must have tricked her and taken her card and put a fake card inside the ATM. She is a bit innocent and as adviced by the guy, entered her pin thrice. Now I think he must have obviously asked her to enter the pin thrice so that he could clearly see what number she was entering and perhaps to make her feel that since she entered the incorrect pin thrice, the card got locked inside. After she entered the pin thrice, nothing happened, the cash didn't come out, neither did the card (which I assume might have been fake). By then the guy had dissappeared. She was a bit confused and thought her card was still stuck inside the ATM. She approached a few people for help. One of them called a cop who called the number mentioned on the ATM. The person on the other end of the call checked in their systems and confirmed that her card was not stuck inside that ATM. After a while he also told her that £300 had been withdrawn out of her card and that her card was accessed at a petrol station whereas she dosent drive and never tried to get cash from an ATM near a petrol pump on that day ! She was very tensed. The bank official asked her to calm down. He blocked her card and gave her some further instructions. The good thing that happened was that the bank will return her money as it was a fraud. I think that guy must have probably confused / hypnotised my friend who might have seemed innocent and naïve to him. One needs to be extremely careful while withdrawing cash from any ATM. If not a lot for some people, £300 can be a big deal for others !

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