Police have warned people across the country, particularly older people, not to give their hard-earned money to a dangerous outfit of criminals, seeking to see TV documentary series and other programmes.
One pensioner, Arnold Guest, said that a gang of men “all with Oxbridge accents, wearing pin-striped suits and reeking of cigars and champagne” turned up unannounced at his door to get him to sign a direct debit for a product known as a “TV licence”.
The 89-year old veteran of the Second World War, said he told them that he preferred streaming services like Amazon Prime and Netflix, though he had stopped Netlix in protest at the outrageous deal they had made with the Sussexes, and had no reason to watch standard television.
However, he agreed to “give it a go” for a few weeks, when persuaded about the quality programmes the groupd would put out. The next thing he knew they had taken a whole year’s subscription fee from his bank account, using a forged bank authority.
Mr Guest added: “The programmes were pretty shite, too”.
He pointed to inaccuracies such as a documentary that showed Winston Churchill as a slave-owning tyrant and another which showed the EU as heaven and the UK as hell.
The chairman of the BBC released a statement saying “We regret the use of the forged bank direct debit form, but are sure that it had no effect on swindling Arnold, because he would have parted with his cash anyway.”
In a linked story, police have revealed that they want to speak to a man known only as “Bashir” who is accused of conning people into giving him interviews. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick said “He offered to give an interview with the police, but we didn’t fall for it.”
