Alan Davies has revealed he gets scammed ‘relentlessly’ online and lost £400 buying a PlayStation 5 that was never delivered.
The Jonathan Creek star, 58, was left out of pocket in 2022 after falling for a fake listing of the Sony games console.
He also said he nearly handed over £457 to a false website when buying Christmas gifts for his three children – Susie, 15, Robert, 13, and Francis, eight – after finding a discontinued Lego set that had made one of their lists.
When asked on BBC Radio Four’s The Infinite Monkey Cage if he had ever fallen victim to a scam, the TV star opened up on his cybersecurity mishaps.
‘Relentlessly, at Christmas I had three Christmas lists from three children and I found every single gift on the site from all three lists, including a Lego set that was no longer made,’ he said.
‘I nearly gave them £457 and then I thought “this is unlikely” but I was scammed on a PS5 two years ago, that was £400 down the drain.
Davies said he also fell victim to a Bitcoin scammer who hacked his account on X, saying that he ‘couldn’t do anything about it’ after finding it ‘impossible’ to contact anyone to speak to.
‘It’s now become almost impossible to contact an actual human being with any company you’re dealing with, my Twitter account was hacked by a bitcoin scammer and I couldn’t do anything about it,’ the QI panelist said.
‘They hacked into my email and I lost my 800,000 followers, not a big fish in the ocean but it was very helpful for me, if I was doing a tour or something.
‘Then I couldn’t get back into the account and they said we suspect you are a bot, we don’t know who you are and I responded “Google me”, I’m not hard to come by, but at no point in that process could I communicate with a human being.
‘What I do when I get the email I’m suspicious of is I have a look at the email address and it’s normally jeremy68qzynamibia and I think “hang on a minute, that isn’t Carphone Warehouse”.’
Earlier this month, Coronation Street star Tony Maudsley revealed he was conned out of £600 while trying to buy Oasis tickets.
Tony had been trying to secure tickets to the band’s much-anticipated reunion tour next year, which will mark the first time brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher have played together since 2009.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Tony wrote: ‘Gutted. Thought I’d lucked out and got 4 OASIS tickets for my brothers birthday.
‘Guy on Facebook who appeared to have mutual friends. I sent £600 to his bank. He kept messaging me saying it hadn’t cleared.’
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However, Tony revealed he managed not to lose the cash, adding: ‘Seems my bank were more on the ball than me and stopped the payment.’
In another post, he added: ‘Beware. This is a new level of scamming. Seems the guy he was pretending to be had had his account hacked.
‘Luckily someone else that knew the real guy got in touch and warned me. Durrrr. WISE UP, MAUDSLEY!!’
BBC News legend Moira Stewart also previously spoke of her ‘anger’ after nearly falling victim to an elaborate bank scam.
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