POLICE are issued a warning about an 'particularly insidious' phone call scam after a Perthshire woman was defrauded out of over £110,000.

Police are concerned that the scammer was using a "number spoofing" technique which made the fraudster look like they were calling from a genuine bank.

The woman had was told that there was a problem with security on her bank accounts, which is a fairly common tactic.

But officers say the scammer had been "particularly devious" because the number he was calling from appeared to be the genuine phone number of the bank’s customer service line.

The scammer also knew lots of personal and private information about the victim, her accounts, her local branch, and even the names of staff members there.

A Tayside Police Division spokesman said: "The victim was naturally dubious about the call to start with, but when provided with personal information was persuaded that the caller was genuine. He then managed to convince her to transfer money out of her accounts and into a 'safe account'.

"Unfortunately, this was a false account used to steal her money. Also, on further investigation some time later, the complainer discovered that the scammer had managed to obtain the information about her from an unwitting family member who had been contacted earlier.

"A well-planned, convincing, targeted scam like this is very difficult to defend against. Our advice would be to end any call you receive of this nature and contact your bank yourself to ask if there are, indeed, any issues with your account.

"If you received the call on a landline, call the bank on a mobile, and vice versa. Also, no bank will ever ask you to transfer money between accounts over the phone."

It comes a day after police issued a warning about a cruel bank scam after a 60-year-old, from Stirling, handed over her credit card on Saturday after receiving a phone call from a man posing as a police officer.

The man claimed to be calling because police had been notified of suspicious activity on her bank account.

The victim was told a police officer would attend her home to collect her bank card.

She handed her card over to the fraudster.

Police Scotland warned in September that the public should be vigilant following recent reports of telephone banking fraud.

In the space of one wee, officers in Edinburgh were made aware of three separate incidents where five figure sums of money were stolen from bank accounts.

In each of these cases, the victims reported that they received telephone calls from someone with a local accent, claiming to be from the fraud team of their local bank branch and who appeared to be calling from a genuine bank telephone number.

The caller then asked the person to transfer funds into a separate account which appears to be operated by the fraudsters.