Church is hacked: scammers want your money

A scammer is posing as the Rector of St Andrews Church and contacting congregation members to trick them out of money. It's known that at least one person bought Tesco vouchers and donated them to the hacker.

An email from St Andrews confirmed that names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses from the church's database have been stolen.

The trickster pretends to be a fellow church member in need of help - asking you to buy Tesco vouchers on behalf of Rector Rev Joe Dent and then asking that the serial numbers are sent to a fake email address. In at least one case a member of the congregation responded to the request and has thereby lost their money.

The Beagle has been sent one of the fake emails - ours came from the "Rector" himself! It asks: "Hope you're doing well! Just wanted to see if you're up for a chat over email. I need you to handle a task for me. I would appreciate a prompt response." It is signed "Joe Dent, Rector" and was sent to us from "josephdentstandrew@yahoo.com".

Some other fake emails are sent from: joedentstandrew@aol.com and joedentstandrew@hotmail.com

Rev Joe wrote: "We have reported this data breach to the Information Commissioner's Office as we are required to, and we will urgently review our processes, staff training and database security." He stressed no financial information had been leaked.

Police advice if you have received one of these emails is to forward it to report@phishing.gov.uk, and then delete the email and block the sender.