Quick thinking Santander Bank Staff save pensioner from scam..

Quick-thinking staff at a bank in Enfield Town saved the day when they managed to prevent an elderly customer being scammed of his life savings.

Hayley Thorne, branch manager at Santander in Market Place, had her suspicions raised when a regular customer in his late seventies came in and asked for £5,000 to be withdrawn from a fixed term bond.

Knowing the man well, Hayley and her colleague Devan Tailor, sensed something was amiss when he explained he needed the cash to pay for emergency drainage works at his house.

Probing a little further, they discovered the vulnerable man was on the verge of being duped by scammers who had turned up on his doorstep and convinced him he needed to pay for repair works. The crooks had spun a persuasive tale, saying that the piping coming from his house was rotten and contaminating the water supply to his neighbours.

Hayley, 26, explained: “The customer had a telephone number he was supposed to call when the money had been transferred. We called the number and the man who answered was really aggressive and intimidating.

“We contacted Thames Water who said they knew nothing about the works then contacted the council who put us on to their trading standards department and then the police.

“The customer had no one to talk to about it, no family or anything. He was happy that we’d intervened and seemed relieved to talk to somebody about the situation. In the end it was a real team-effort by the branch.”

“I could tell something was wrong as soon as he came in,” Devan said.

“He was shaking and out of breath as if he had run here. I persuaded him to calm down and talk to me. He had been told he must have the money in this account by the next day or they were going to start legal proceedings.

“He had been receiving threatening phone calls non-stop from this man. I’m so glad we were able to stop this happening to him.”

“I would want any of our customers to come to us if they problems or if they’re ever unsure about anything,” Hayley added.

“A lot of our customers are elderly and we want to protect their money and their welfare.

I feel so relieved that, even though it was just one person, we were able to stop it happening.”