After my relative lost £140,000 to fraudsters, I set out to create a scam detector: Tech entrepreneur Alex Somervell talks to JESSICA BEARD

When Alex Somervell discovered that Ashley, a close relative, had handed over £140,000 to not just one but three different, unrelated fraudsters, his first reaction was anger.

In the heat of the moment, he blamed them for sending so much money in four months and for not doing due diligence.

“I felt very bad. It was a human reaction, but now I realise that it was not helpful,” he says.

But Alex’s anger soon turned into a desire to fight the criminals perpetrating these scams. He embarked on a mission to give victims the tools they needed to stop them immediately.

Alex, 32, who previously cut his teeth as an entrepreneur on BBC show Dragons’ Den (he turned down Dragons money) and built a multi-million pound business with long-term partner Jonny Pryn, has set up a new venture to fight back.

The concept was simple: a free scam checker that anyone could use to assess whether a text, website, letter or email was likely fake.

The pair built an AI-powered tool that runs on the messaging app WhatsApp last October, called Ask Silver.

You can sign up for the service on their website, ask-silver.com, by submitting your phone number and email address, and you will automatically receive a WhatsApp message from Ask Silver.

You can then run unlimited checks for free on anything you suspect is a scam. To do this, you need to take a photo or screenshot of any email, website or flyer you are concerned about and send it to Ask Silver via WhatsApp.

Silver uses artificial intelligence to detect red flags, informing users whether the content is likely to be real or not and providing suggestions on next steps to stay safe.

Alex comments: “We noticed that it’s very common for parents to send a screenshot of a suspicious message to their adult children, asking them if they can be trusted. The family has become the first line of defence because there is no official way to check. But we’ve created a checker that can work more accurately.”

Alex and Jonny have connected the scanner to several scam warning databases, including the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) Unauthorised Firm Warning List.

Within seconds, Scam Checker can check whether links lead to official websites or not, so you know if they are safe to click on. It also detects typical phrases or expressions used by scammers, such as pressure tactics to assess the level of risk.

After you submit the screenshot or image, you will receive one of three responses almost instantly.

A red flag means that there has been a match in the system with a known scam and you should not under any circumstances interact with the website or email.

An amber flag is sent when there is no match in the database, but there are highly suspicious elements that suggest the email, text, letter or website is a scam.

Users will rarely receive a yellow flag, suggesting that the image appears to be legitimate, but they should still be cautious.

Alex says: ‘The bar is very, very high for the yellow flag, and we will never give the full green light to anything.

We always recommend being cautious, because there may be legitimate communications within a larger scam, especially if the criminal is starting to use social engineering to get you to trust them.

We always recommend contacting the organization directly and not simply responding to an email or text message.

If Ashley, who does not want her real name revealed, had used the Scam Checker to review the ads that lured her into scams before sending money, she may have saved herself the pain and heartache.

Ashley had been tricked into making a cryptocurrency investment that promised high returns in bitcoins, the most famous digital currency. They first made a payment of £3,000 and, as that amount increased, they continued to accumulate more money.

Over the following months, they would invest £80,000 into the cryptocurrency platform with the help of a fake financial advisor who claimed to work for the company. However, it emerged that although the account had been created on a genuine platform, it had been opened in the name of the fake financial advisor.

This meant that Alex’s relatives could no longer access his money when they wanted to withdraw it.

Over the next four months, they would invest in two more fraudulent companies: one in renewable bonds, whose company was listed on Companies House, and the second in Singapore gold options. In each of these, they invested a total of £40,000 and £20,000 respectively.

Police visits, calls to the UK’s fraud intelligence centre and to the banks involved, unfortunately, were of no use in locating the fraudsters.

Fortunately, the banks reimbursed her relative more than £104,000 as they recognised the money had been lost to sophisticated fraudsters.

Criminals who prey on Britain’s most vulnerable rarely face the consequences of their actions. Last year, more than 2.9 million cases of fraud were reported, with losses of £1.2 billion. Although fraud accounts for around 40% of all crime in the UK, the country receives just 1% of police funding.

“The biggest revelation I’ve come to understand is that everyone, regardless of age or intelligence, goes through a vulnerable moment where they’re susceptible to being scammed,” Alex says. “And this happens all the time. At first, I assumed that you had to be old or vulnerable to be scammed, but we’ve reached a point where anyone can be scammed.”

Three of Alex’s friends, who are in their 30s (two of whom are tech entrepreneurs), were also scammed and lost between £40,000 and £160,000.

Alex may not have received the justice he wanted for Ashley, but he has created a very valuable service that can be widely used to protect people.

A key part of this is reporting scams, something Alex has made a core element of his Scam Checker. After examining the image and telling you how risky it is, Ask Silver offers to report the scam to the relevant authorities and agencies, such as your bank, on your behalf.

Reporting a scam can be a complicated process – there are many ways to flag a suspicious message depending on how it is received. For example, fraudulent text messages should be forwarded via text to 7726; fraudulent emails sent to report@phishing.gov.uk and fraudulent websites should be reported via a form on the National Cyber ​​Security Centre website at ncsc.gov.uk. And any scam should also be reported to the organisation being impersonated in the message. For example, if the criminal claims to be from Royal Mail or HMRC, they should be alerted too.

“It’s so complicated that many people don’t report the messages they receive. It should be much easier to do so,” says Alex. “By alerting the relevant groups there’s a chance that that website, email address or phone number will be shut down. If we can get hundreds of people to report a particular number in a month, then we can try to put enough pressure on a phone provider to say that this is dangerous and they should do something about it.”

Although still a start-up, the company has already won an FCA award and is expected to pilot a National Trading Standards scheme.

Alex hopes that banks will start supporting Scam Checker and sharing it with customers as a tool to protect themselves.

He says: ‘The data on scams we receive will be invaluable to banks and authorities, who can take action to stop fraudsters.

‘More than anything, I wanted to use my family’s experience to help others and do good in the world.’

j.beard@dailymail.co.uk