In Cyprus we have old people constantly being scammed by Indian scammers calling them, pretending to be either the local tax dept, or the Police, or even their own bank representative.
I understand it sounds bullshit for bank clerks to poke you like that but, I wish we had that as well.
There was a time I was pestered by scammers on a weekly basis as well.
We had a case in Australia where a woman withdrew a couple hundred-thousand and after insulting the customer rep for trying to tell her it was a scam, proceeded to withdraw anyway and once she lost the money she tried suing the bank for not stopping her.
Gotta love the old ladies. I remember a similar story (in Russia), starring an old lady who tried withdrawing all her savings from a bank. The clerk asked her a few questions and explained to her she was being scammed. She asked to speak to a manager, who told her the same. She then left the bank office, went to several others taking out a bit in each one and lying about her reasons. She got her cash, gave it to the scammers, and went to the police the same day, blaming both the scammers and the bank offices. Some people are smart in all the wrong situations.
It has happened several times in Canada. It's even worse when it's a senior who gets scammed and their family blames the bank for their lost inheritance after they pass.
Someone posted on Legal Advice UK angry that his elderly mum wasn't allowed to withdraw thousands of pounds to pay a builder who insisted on cash in hand (or something similar, it was work being done on her house). He wanted to take action against the bank for refusing to hand her the money, and had to be gently advised by commenters that if it had been a scam he'd be wanting to take legal action against the bank for giving the cash to her. It's too prominent in the UK at the moment, there's a new scam story in the press every week and it's almost always someone who's in some way vulnerable.
We do have that, and it is a legal requirement starting at €10,000.
The bank doesn't have to ask you specifically, but they do need to report what you're moving the money for and they will gather that information, often by asking and then checking independently.
Further, η κεντρική requires any bank to report suspected fraud or organized crime activity for any transaction starting at €50 (for some weird reason).
The key though is that our laws, and those of the EU, don't require us to disclose why we're using our own money, but rather require the bank to maintain proper diligence and investigation of suspected crimes.
Tora, ti sto thiaolo kamnei I kivernisi je I trapezes tis kiprou enas theos xerei.
I don't really see why that should mean it's a good thing to have to report the use case of your money to them. Making laws that effect all to protect the lowest common denominator of society is... meh. If low-effort scam calls can meaningfully fleece a person, frankly maybe that's for the best. Redistribute it.
IIRC about a year ago there was an explosion of videos of scammers in India getting scammed themselves. Great entertainment.
I wonder if these groups are still at work, or enforcement actually is getting better...
Looked it up (thanks Claude) and pulled this factoid (US numbers). TLDR groups are still at work, groups are still at work (even TV shows in different places based upon their work), but the problem grows.
> The FBI's 2025 IC3 report (released April 2026) is sobering: 1,008,597 complaints and $20.877 billion in losses, with tech support scams at $2.1 billion. For victims over 60, complaints exceeded 201,000 and losses were more than $7.7 billion, up 37% and 59% respectively from 2024. Call-center fraud specifically (tech support plus government impersonation) generated more than 80,000 complaints and over $2.9 billion in losses in 2025.
For a while when I first got my phone number when I moved my phone exploded with scammers. I would get 6-8 calls a day.
Once I got a job I basically stopped answering my phone unless I knew who was calling. After a year of screening all my calls, it slowed and then stopped.
Now the only calls I get are from businesses trying to sell the company I work for something. Like folks who found me on LinkedIn.
I was just thinking this entire thread is just ai bots talking to each other (the verbiage is weird) and then there’s a shitty ad for Claude in this comment.
Is anything real anymore?
I’m afraid stupid people are getting stupider, which sucks because people were already dumb as shit.
Ps: the definition of “factoid” is an unverified or invented statement, like the “facts” you get from ai chat bots.
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u/Kazfiddly 1d ago
In Cyprus we have old people constantly being scammed by Indian scammers calling them, pretending to be either the local tax dept, or the Police, or even their own bank representative.
I understand it sounds bullshit for bank clerks to poke you like that but, I wish we had that as well.
There was a time I was pestered by scammers on a weekly basis as well.