A phone scam prevalent across the region in the last number of days has been raised with the Garda Crime Prevention Officer for the West by Galway City councillor Niall McNelis.

The labour councillor highlighted the problem after a number of elderly residents in his area had been targeted by what’s termed  the “Ring Once” scam.

The fraudster randomly selects phone numbers right across the world to scam. They ring your phone number just once. You see a missed called on your phone, often a US or UK number, and they hope you will ring the number back and pay a premium rate to listen to a recorded message.

The clear advise is  - do not call back any missed, unknown foreign number on your phone.

Cllr McNelis told Midwest News today that with so many elderly people cocooned at present, the scam is particularly nasty.

He says sometimes an elderly person is concerned about how the fraudster secured their phone number, and  he explains that it’s a computer system that selects numbers at random and may target anyone, and may do so more than once.

Again the advice is do not ring an unknown number back if you see a missed call or you may pay a high premium rate for the return call.