“Hi Mom, I dropped my phone in the toilet”

A message from an unknown number, written just like her son, nearly cost a nurse $2,600. One question stopped it.

What happened

On a Sunday morning, Rosa, 58, got a text from a number she didn’t know: “Hi Mom, it’s me. Dropped my phone in the toilet, this is my new number. Can you save it?”

Her son lives three states away and is always losing things, so she saved it. An hour later the number asked for help: his banking app was locked on the new phone, and he needed to pay his landlord $2,600 today or he’d get a late fee. Could she send it, and he’d pay her back next week?

“I had my thumb on the send button. One question was all it took.”

The scam

This is the “Hi Mum” or family emergency scam. Scammers send the same opening text to thousands of numbers. They don’t know who you are until you reply and fill in the gaps for them.

The new-number story explains why the voice and photo don’t match, and the locked banking app explains why “he” can’t pay himself. The urgency keeps you from stopping to check.

What Rosa did

Rosa was about to send the money when she remembered a family rule her daughter had suggested: ask something only the real person would know. She texted back, “What was the name of our first dog?”

The number went quiet. She called her son on his old number, and he answered from his couch, phone very much dry. She blocked the number and reported it.

Red flags

• A family member texting from a new number they ask you to save.
• A reason they can’t call, or can’t pay themselves.
• A request to pay someone else, like a landlord or a “friend”, rather than them.
• Pressure to pay today.

How to protect yourself

• If a loved one texts from a new number, call their old number before anything else.
• Agree a family code word, or ask a question only they could answer.
• Never send money to an account in someone else’s name because a text told you to.
• Scammers can also clone voices from short clips online. If a call sounds right but feels wrong, hang up and call back.

Every story is a composite of commonly reported cases. Names, places, amounts and links are changed.