Raleigh International

A gap year student's parents are warning of an internet scam that asks for money and can con people into thinking their children are in jail.

Mr and Mrs Hogg received an email from their son's account, while he was in Colombia, begging for money to pay off corrupt policemen. However, as they were about to wire the money over, they received a phone call from 19-year-old Josh who was absolutely fine and enjoying his travels. Opportunists had hacked into his email and Facebook accounts and pretended to be him.

Mrs Hogg told the Telegraph: "The emails supposedly from Josh were written in a convincing, familiar style and were completely plausible, particularly as they included snippets of information referring to earlier parts of his trip which meant someone must have read his emails and traced his travels.
"We don't even feel stupid, which usually you would after falling victim to a scam, because it all sounded so genuine, so believable."

She added: "There is very little chance of catching whoever was behind this, all we can do is make others aware of this type of scam. People are nowadays so glib about what they write on Facebook, you just never know who is taking note."