It starts with two familiar words: “Hi Mum” or “Hi Dad.” A message arrives on WhatsApp from a number you don’t recognise, explaining that your child has lost, broken or replaced their phone — could you save this new number? It feels ordinary enough that most parents simply reply. That reply is the moment the scam begins.
How the scam unfolds
After the initial contact and a bit of friendly back-and-forth to build trust, the conversation shifts. The “child” explains they urgently need money — to pay a bill, replace the phone, or cover an unexpected cost — and asks for a bank transfer, or sometimes a request framed around gift cards or cryptocurrency. In some versions, the request escalates further, to sharing a banking verification code or personal photos. Security researchers tracking the scam note that because the request comes wrapped in genuine-sounding family concern, and arrives on a platform people associate with close contacts, it bypasses a lot of the scepticism a stranger’s message would trigger.
UK police forces have specifically documented this pattern under names like the “friend in need” scam, with criminals typically opening with “Hello Mum” or “Hello Dad” before explaining away the unfamiliar number and moving quickly to a request for money.
Why it works, and how it’s evolving
The scam’s effectiveness comes from exploiting genuine parental instinct: worry, combined with a desire to help quickly, short-circuits the kind of careful verification people would normally apply to a stranger’s financial request. It has also proven costly — UK reporting has tracked losses running into the hundreds of thousands of pounds from this specific scam pattern.
The scam continues to evolve. Newer variants use AI voice-cloning technology to generate a convincing voice note or even a live-sounding call, rather than relying purely on text, making the “is this really my child” instinct even harder to trust on its own.
How to protect yourself and your family
- Always verify independently. Call your child, or another relative, on the number you already have saved for them — never the new number provided in the suspicious message — before sending anything.
- Never send money, gift cards, banking details or verification codes based only on a message from an unfamiliar number, no matter how convincing or urgent it sounds.
- Agree a family verification method in advance — a shared question or phrase only your family would know — so that if a genuine emergency does involve a new number, you have a quick, reliable way to confirm identity.
- Be equally cautious of voice notes and calls, not just text messages, given the growing use of AI voice cloning in more recent versions of the scam.
- Report suspicious messages — within WhatsApp itself, and to your national fraud reporting service.
What to do if you’ve already sent money
Contact your bank immediately — the faster a suspicious transfer is reported, the better the chance of it being frozen or recovered. Report the scam to your national fraud reporting centre (Action Fraud in the UK, via actionfraud.police.uk or 0300 123 2040), and keep a record of the messages as evidence. There’s no need for embarrassment in reporting it: this specific scam has caught out large numbers of careful, sensible people precisely because it’s designed to.
Who else this scam targets
While “Hi Mum, Hi Dad” specifically targets parents, the same underlying technique — impersonating a trusted contact from an unfamiliar number, building a plausible cover story, then asking for money or sensitive information — shows up aimed at other relationships too: a message claiming to be a sibling, a close friend, or even a boss asking an employee to urgently buy gift cards. The specific script changes, but the mechanism doesn’t: an unfamiliar number, a plausible reason for it, and pressure to act before you’ve had time to verify.
This is worth knowing because it means the defence isn’t really specific to parenthood — anyone who receives an unexpected, urgent request for money or sensitive information from someone claiming to be a known contact, on a new or unfamiliar number, is looking at the same underlying scam pattern, whatever relationship it’s dressed up as. The verification habit — call them back on the number you already have — applies just as well regardless of which relationship the scammer is impersonating.
The bottom line
The “Hi Mum, Hi Dad” scam succeeds by hijacking a parent’s instinct to help quickly, using an unfamiliar number and a plausible cover story. The single most effective defence is simple and consistent: verify on a number you already trust before sending money, a code, or personal information — no matter how the message arrives or how convincing it sounds.