Burglars and Home Security Scams

We recently wrote about a possible scam involving locksmith stickers which had been linked to a burglary in the Wandsworth area of London.

These small stickers are used by many locksmiths as a legitimate marketing tool, but the suspect stickers had raised alarm because they featured a non-working phone number. However, it seems that only one burglary has occurred in a house that had been stickered. Furthermore, some residents reported that every house in their street had received a sticker, suggesting that it could even have been a legitimate marketing tactic gone wrong.

The London Evening Standard reported last week in an interview with a local locksmith who uses similar stickers that they are designed to be small enough to fit on an intercom so that if a resident is locked out the number is convenient for them to call.

Whether or not these stickers are legitimate, it’s still important to be vigilant! If you have noticed a similar sticker on your property, do a search online for the number and remove the sticker if you do not find any matches. If you want to make sure you have the number of a local locksmith in case of an emergency (and you live in North London or East London), save one of our numbers to your mobile: 020 8883 1555 or 020 8364 2000.

There are other scams which involve a burglar masquerading as a security professional in order to take advantage of the trust that position conveys.

A scam that we first wrote about last year has resurfaced recently in the Enfield area: men dressed as burglar alarm salesmen are knocking on doors and talking to residents about their security under the guise of a ‘free security survey’ but with the aim of finding out the weak spots so that they can return later and burgle the property. In some cases, homeowners have even allowed the ‘salesmen’ into their houses and shown them around.

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