More than £138,000 has been lost by islanders to bank scams.

In the last six days, 14 people have approached the States of Jersey Police to report bank scam texts.

The force recorded a total loss of £624,000 to this form of fraud in 2023.

Texts such as these are called 'spoofing', which is people pretending to be companies, or from one, by changing aspects of their texts and numbers to make it look legitimate.

Some victims will receive a fake text, in most cases using the name of a high-street bank, claiming that a payment has been attempted on their account.

Payments are usually something that the person does not recognise, such as a crypto-currency company, creating a sense of unfamiliarity and panic.

The scammers have used CryptoCom as the recipient company in the most recent cases.

The rest of the message reads: 'Reply Y if this was you, if not, reply N and you will receive a call shortly'.

If someone responds, the scammer will ring them to encourage them to move money from their account.

They do this by being able to tell their victims information about themselves, such as their date of birth, their address, and even bank information, including recent payments or even bank card numbers.

The con artist will then tell the unsuspecting person their account has been compromised and ask for their victim's answer to their security question to move their money to 'safety'.

The victim will usually believe the scammer and give access to their account, not realising they have been scammed until their account is cleared of all its funds.

If you get a call or text claiming something is wrong with your account, do not respond.

Instead, go to the service provider yourself and check to see if this is legitimate or not:

• Do not trust caller ID or the number displayed on your phone.
• Do not give out any personal information, including security codes.
• End the call, wait 5 minutes, and contact the service provider rather than the numbers provided.