A Kerry pensioner has been scammed out of a substantial sum of money, by criminals purporting to be from online trading company Amazon.
Gardaí in Tralee are investigating the incident - and have warned online shoppers in Kerry to be extremely cautious, ahead of the upcoming Amazon Prime event.
The 78-year-old woman, who lives in the Tralee area, is an existing customer of Amazon and has shopped online with them in the past.
She received a phonecall earlier this week from a man with a foreign accent, who claimed he was from Amazon and needed to access her account.
He also persuaded her to forward him a photocopy of her passport.
The woman later discovered that a substantial amount of money had been taken from her bank account.
Garda Joe Ryan from the fraud team at the Kerry Garda Division, says Gardaí are investigating the incident but it's not yet known if the woman will get her money back.
He says with increased online shopping activity at present, because of the pandemic, people need to be extremely careful about who they deal with online.
Garda Ryan also warns that scammers will be especially active ahead of the popular Amazon prime online shopping event in the next few days.
