What is the ‘Lebanese Loop’ parking meter scam?

The grammar used to describe the scam initially was poor. It took several attempts to work out who he/they/them was or were!

My sister was phoned by a scammer trying to get details of her bank account. Whilst on the phone to the scammer, she had her husband phone her bank manager on another phone. She then put the two phones together so that the scammer was speaking to the bank manager. The scammer then tried to scam the bank manager! The bank manager was shocked at how plausible and convincing the scammer sounded; the conversation only ended when the scammer was unable to give the bank manager a “special” fraud code used by the bank. These scammers are professionals at their crime and are very difficult to detect.

What is a Lebanese loop?You describe it as a device,but not what sort of a device.So how would I recognise one?This is not explained,so i am no wiser as to what it is.So I find this article unhelpful

If this person could pay him back in cash, why didn’t the person who was “scammed” suggest he pay by cash and not a card?? It is often suggested that it is the older person who falls foul of these evil people, well coming up to 73, not particularly old in this day & age, but I certainly would not have given any credit/debit card to a stranger!
I get quite a lot of phone calls from “companies” purporting to be genuine, but there are often tell tale signs that the call is not legitimate. One is the break between the time you pick up the phone and someone speaking. Rule of thumb; if you did not request a call, do not speak to them, politely state you are not interested, goodbye and put the phone down. Rarely do they call again!! Another way of dissuading them is when they speak, they will invariably call you by your Christian name, I then say I don’t know you, who gave you permission to use my Christian name. That invariably throws them and they put the phone down!

A scam that I was nearly taken in by only yesterday. I received a text purporting to be from the fraud department of my bank wishing to verify a transaction for a rather large amount to a retailer that I have had previous dealings with. Everything appeared to be correct; the name of the bank was correct, the name of the retailer was a retailer not too unfamiliar to me and would actually be my preferred choice when making a significant purchases as they provide a generous additional extension to original manufacturers warranty as standard (shouldn’t be too difficult to work out the retailer named in the bogus text), even the amount of the transaction matched worryingly too closely to the amount currently held in the account. I received the text after a long shift at work and it was close to 3am, I phoned the number provided in the bogus text. The call was picked up and had my bank’s automated answer message, “Thank you for calling ‘my bank’……” the message went on to state I was queued and I would get to speak to someone shortly. After around 30 seconds on hold, the call was discontinued. I phoned the number again, with the same result. I used the browser on my phone and got the contact details for my bank (nearly falling for a listing that was an advert for a service provided by a third party to route my call to my bank whilst charging me a hefty fee for the privilege, you have to be so careful these days). I rang my bank using the number given at their website; I got the same automated answering service intro “Thank you for call ‘my bank’….” that I recognised from calling the fraud number given in the bogus text, after being given a number of choices and having to respond with my numeric keypad on my phone, press 1 for, press 2 for, press 3 for, etc, I was informed that it was out of hours but that I still had the option to speak to the 24 hours fraud team. Good, because that’s who I wanted to speak to. After a bit of call rerouting I arrived back at an automated message stating the bank phone line opening hours and being invited to call back during those times and “Goodbye” and the call was discontinued. I immediately called back; with the same result, each call taking a number of minutes of being given choices and responding with my keypad to always get to the same point and the call ending without me speaking personally with a member of staff and being invited to callback during office opening hours. So much for my banks 24 hours security and fraud departments efficiency! Tired at this point, I decided that I would head home go to bed and call later in the morning. I slept very little with the details of the bogus text worrying me, so I got up early, looked at the text agin and phoned the number, and this time it was answered. My suspicions were immediately aroused and the call went no further than me saying “hello” and the person on the other end saying “hello”, I paused, hmmmmm something is not quite right, I thought; I said “hello” once again and the person on the other end said “hello, I can hear you”, at this point I realised that I wasn’t actually speaking to a member of staff from my bank and ended the call. I then searched online using my computer at home and rang my bank. They answered and were able to confirm that my current balance was intact, untouched and that the details of the text were bogus and advised to contact my mobile phone network provider to see if I had incurred some horrendously large call charge by phoning the number given in the bogus text. I rang my mobile phone network provider and luckily my current plan covers the cost of unlimited calls and there would be nothing additional to pay, it wasn’t a premium rate, or worse, number that I had dailed. The most worrying part of all this is that the people behind this attempted fraud by deception have the capability to mimic my bank’s automated answering machine “Thank you for calling ‘my bank’……..”. The part that let this scam down was that when someone came on the line they acted in such a manner as to immediately raise my suspicions enough for me to end the call without compromising any of my personal bank details. Be careful!

Why call it a “Lebanese” scam? What, if anything,has it got to do with Lebanon?

This happened to me in Regents Park it was exactly how it happened .i did not put in the second card in but they still got away with around £2000.00. there was a problem though The police did not want to know and referred me Action fraud.