What Have ISIS Done This Week? ISIS Have Tricked Your Nan Into Buying Them Guns

What Have ISIS Done This Week, Then? ISIS have tricked pensioners into funding their jihad campaign through a series of cold call scams targeting British OAPS, like your nan. Like your feeble, feeble nan.

What? Last night police warned the public to be especially vigilant to cold call scams, because two pensioners in Cornwall lost £130,000 between them and another victim got done for £150,000. Normally that would just be considered a straight-up phone scam, but seeing as Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism team have gotten involved, it's thought the men behind the scheme are diverting your nan's Werther's-and-sherry fund to ISIS's guns and bombs fund.

WHAT? Yesterday, seven raids were made across the capital, with two men aged 29 and 37 arrested in West London and a 23-year-old arrested in the east. The funds haven't been located yet, and the men are being held on suspicion of fraud and money laundering.

How Did Three Men Convince My Nan to Pay Them £150,000? Basically, scammers phone up posing as the police, and warn victims that their bank accounts have been compromised. But here's the scam: they have not been compromised at all. The victims are then told to divert their funds to a separate account, some basic pensioner scamming goes on ("Remember the war, ah? Those were the days. Do you also remember your PIN number?"), and that nest egg your nan was going to leave you so you could buy a house is now being used to terrorise people.

How Are the Police Connecting This with ISIS? With police work, or something. "Officers are investigating a large-scale fraud linked to UK extremists travelling to Syria," a Scotland Yard spokesman said yesterday. "The arrests form part of an ongoing fraud investigation, whereby unsuspecting vulnerable and elderly victims are cold-called on their home phone by a suspect impersonating a police officer, informing them their bank account has been compromised and deceiving victims into transferring money to an account under the control of the suspect."

Is This An Actual Thing, Though? Despite this story sounding like it was conceived as part of a MailOnline copy editor's wet dream, it is an actual thing, yes. Like: a MailOnline copy editor dreams about their own nan, with her spindly old lady hands, picking up the phone, and on the other end of the phone is Jihadi John – so polite, the nan is saying later, and spoke such good English – and Jihadi John is like, "There is something wrong with your gas bill and you need to pay us £150,000" and the nan is like "let me just get me glasses" and Jihadi John – he's desperate, now, Jihadi John, the bombs are falling – Jihadi John is like "can you not PayPal it over I'm in a bit of a rush" and the nan is very slowly reading out her card details and HNNK: the MailOnline copy editor awakes with a start, their duvet sodden through, their groin pulsating. The opening sentence to the MailOnline coverage of this story – "Islamic fanatics are stealing the life savings of UK pensioners to bankroll jihad in Syria" – is actual pornography to Richard Littlejohn. But this is still real.

How Can I Protect My Nan from the Horror of ISIS? Nans only fall for these telephone scams because telephone scammers are the only people who ever call them. Like: every time your nan's phone rings she is probably all, "Oh, I hope that is my beloved grandchild, who I haven't heard from in such a long time," and instead it is a man from ISIS with a nice voice. Because you're too busy at the pub to call your nan, your nan is funding ISIS. That's what your appalling lack of love for your nan has done: it's caused terrorism. Call your nan more.

@joelgolby