Subject: Urgent Scam Report — Impersonation of Sky, Fraudulent Orders Made on My Account

[dbossom]

Currently helping my 89-year-old mother-in-law who has fallen victim to this exact scam.

• Yesterday (15 July) two high-end Apple devices arrived, unordered, delivered by DPD.
• I reported the fraud to Sky Customer Service, who explained that her account had been proactively locked. So they could not access it themselves.
• Told to wait for a call from the Investigations Team.
• Today (16th July), the regular postman arrived with a returns label (addressed to Newcastle) to collect the devices.
• A further call to Sky Customer Service confirmed that the Newcastle address belonged to the scammers. The postman was sent away empty-handed.
• The Sky man said that the correct returns address would be 'Norway' (sic).  I believe that he meant Norfolk or Norwich, which is one of the two postcodes listed on the original Sky packaging.
• Again, we were told to wait for a call from the Investigations Team - in 7-10 days -  but it does seem plausible that my mother-in-law will be chased for the devices by the scammers, either by phone or worse still, in person.
• Net, net, I do think Sky should respond quicker to this distressing (for my mother-in-law) situation, to retrieve the devices, refund the subscription amounts and unlock my mother-in-law's account, without which we are helpless.

[dbossom]

My 89-year-old mother-in-law has been caught up in the famous scam where expensive Apple hardware is delivered to her house, that she didn't order.  I am trying to untangle the scammers' attempts to recover the hardware, from real Sky communications.  It's really hard to separate real from fake.  Already she has received TWO postage paid return labels, both fake, one delivered by the postman and the second by email.  She is now receiving multiple emails 'from Sky' each day.  

Is there a list somewhere of genuine Sky email addresses?  (I found a similar list of Sky phone numbers on this forum).

For example, the second returns label (100% fake) came from the domain skypromotions.store

[caesarome]

I'm not sure there is a list of actual Sky email addresses as scammers can fake the address they use but with emails the key is to look at how they are addressed to her. Genuine emails from Sky will use her actual name while scammers usually use something "Dear customer".

More help might be found here:

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-scams-help

The return address for the mobile is a Nuneaton address as show here under "If you have received an unexpected parcel" option:

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/account-takeover

[dbossom]

Thanks @caesarome for your fast reply.    Nothing is ever so straightforward, sadly.

I have learnt that it is possible to view an email sender's actual address by looking at the source code (in Gmail, for example, the command is 'Show Original') which displays the actual address that the scammer sent from. In this case, it really is from the domain skypromotions.store.

Unfortunately, the fraud in which my mother-in-law is caught started with an Account Takeover (as Sky calls it). So they have her account details, including her name.  But yes, the scammers managed to mis-spell that, twice, in the latest fraudulent email.

I believe that there are actually two  legitimate return addresses for Sky equipment, the second one is in Norwich.  They are both listed on the received packaging, and shown here Return Sky Mobile Equipment 

For what it's worth, the (real) Sky Customer Services rep to whom I reported the fraud on the phone insisted that the Return address would (only) be in Norway (sic).  I had to explain that I believed that he meant Norwich, and that Norway was a separate country, in Scandinavia .  If it wasn't so traumatic for my 89-year-old mother-in-law, you would have to laugh.

[GD1]

@dbossom  You raised this 3 days ago on the back of another thread, this post has been split and i've merged your recent thread.

[dbossom]

Update: six days in (from receipt of unordered Apple devices) and my mother-in-law has received a third postage-paid returns label (this one by email) from the scammers.  Am tempted to use it to gift them a log, or similar. 

But still nothing from Sky themselves, to whom we would obviously like to return the devices.  It's beyond disappointing. 

[twilight+princess]

I suspect in the next 6 days they'll email or call to say they'll send a courier 'round to collect the phones.

[dbossom]

By 'they', do you mean Sky themselves or the scammers? 

[twilight+princess]

Sorry, I meant the scammers. It would be a last ditch attempt to obtain the phones. They may try to pressure your MiL to hand over the phones - get her to say she's returned them to Sky & then close the door on them.

[dbossom]

Thank you @twilight+princess   Good idea. I have removed the devices elsewhere.

In other news, I have attempted to answer my own question by examining the batch of 20+ emails that my mother-in-law received 'as if from Sky' in the last 10 days.  There are TWO domains which are being used by the scammers to send emails to support this fraud:

• promotion-sky.online   Registered to an address in Iceland.  Registrar: namecheap.inc.  Created 7/6/24
• skypromotions.store   Registered to an address in Iceland. Registrart: namecheap Inc.  Created 16/6/25

Forum users should red flag any emails received from these two domains.  (Legitimate emails from the actual Sky, during this fraud attempt, come from the domain contact.sky which is registered to Sky UK Limited).

[twilight+princess]

Hopefully Sky will sort things out before the scammers call again.

[Brill+Gill]

Hi there @dbossom, I’ve escalated your post to our Community Messaging team who will invite you to a private chat shortly and help you with this. 

Just look out for the colourful bubble to start the conversation. Please be aware conversations automatically close if there is no response within 48 hours.

Here's more information on how Community Messaging works - https://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Did-you-know/Escalating-a-post-to-a-Sky-expert/ba-p/3711147
 

[dbossom · Accepted solution]

Happy to conclude this thread by reporting that, following the intervention of Sky Expert Gillian via this forum, I finally got a call today from Sky Account Security and was able to achieve resolution and refunds etc, on behalf of my elderly mother-in-law.

The process is far from perfect however, particularly in that it took 10 days from receipt of the fraudulent order, to resolution. The issue is that one cannot speak directly to the Security team unless and until invited to do so.  I do think that when the victim is elderly and vulnerable, the process needs to be speeded up to prevent continuing anxiety and mental anguish.  I have passed the same comments, together with my diary of contacts with the fraudsters, to the security team.