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Successful police prosecution for PDL scam?
Has anyone ever managed to get or heard of a successful prosecution resulting from a case like mine (I now know their are thousands of cases like mine!)?
Last Monday I noticed a card payment leaving my account for £117 to a PDL called Txtloan. Never used any PDL ever and immediately knew this was fraudulent.
This was the first time I have been scammed. I reported it to my bank (Santander) and got the card cancelled. They said they would send out some paperwork for me to fill in to claim the money back. Letter from their Fraud Operations dept arrived on Wednesday saying:
"Our records show that payments have debited your account previously to the same merchant prior to this claim. Due to these circumstances we are not able to reimburse the payments at this time".
I rang them and naively replied to one of their questions by admitting that my wife had once used my card with my permission and in my presence to order something online. As soon as I'd said it they declared that the case was closed and I wouldn't be getting reimbursed as I had broken the T&Cs of the card/bank agreement. I told them that I'm not that bothered about the cash particularly but need to know when/where or who these previous payments had been made. The bank account is my company account and gets reconciled by me to the last penny daily in Sage so I would notice immediately if anything like this had happened before. My main worry is that a member of staff may have gained access to my card in work as it is used for ordering various things daily.
For the next 20 minutes I argued with three different "advisors", none of whom could give me any more details such as dates or amounts etc.(the letter didn't give dates or amounts!). Their ultimate response was "Take it up with the loan company".
I began a series of emails (cannot get a phone number to a real person anywhere!) with Txtloan. Their "Fraud Manager" is very polite and neatly swerves any direct question. He has however said that this is the only transaction on this card that has ever been taken by Txtloan.
I also reported it to my local police force last week and got an incident number. I asked the police to contact Txtloan to find out who had arranged the scam. Police won't. Full stop! They say it must be reported to them by the loan company!! I email Txtloan, give them the incident number and the name and phone number of the police sergeant I spoke to and ask them to make contact with the police. Txtloan reply saying thats not the way it works and the police should get in touch with them in writing!
I feel like I'm about to explode with frustration! I am the victim of a crime. I have had £117 stolen from me. I have reported it to the bank and the police. Both have said that there is nothing they can do! Neither it seems are willing to contact Txtloan to ask for some very simple information........Whose bank account was the loan originally paid into?
Has anyone any advice on what I can possibly do? If I have been scammed by someone I've never heard of then I shall put it down to experience and be more careful in future. If however it is someone who works for me then they need to be sacked and strung up.
:mad:
Last Monday I noticed a card payment leaving my account for £117 to a PDL called Txtloan. Never used any PDL ever and immediately knew this was fraudulent.
This was the first time I have been scammed. I reported it to my bank (Santander) and got the card cancelled. They said they would send out some paperwork for me to fill in to claim the money back. Letter from their Fraud Operations dept arrived on Wednesday saying:
"Our records show that payments have debited your account previously to the same merchant prior to this claim. Due to these circumstances we are not able to reimburse the payments at this time".
I rang them and naively replied to one of their questions by admitting that my wife had once used my card with my permission and in my presence to order something online. As soon as I'd said it they declared that the case was closed and I wouldn't be getting reimbursed as I had broken the T&Cs of the card/bank agreement. I told them that I'm not that bothered about the cash particularly but need to know when/where or who these previous payments had been made. The bank account is my company account and gets reconciled by me to the last penny daily in Sage so I would notice immediately if anything like this had happened before. My main worry is that a member of staff may have gained access to my card in work as it is used for ordering various things daily.
For the next 20 minutes I argued with three different "advisors", none of whom could give me any more details such as dates or amounts etc.(the letter didn't give dates or amounts!). Their ultimate response was "Take it up with the loan company".
I began a series of emails (cannot get a phone number to a real person anywhere!) with Txtloan. Their "Fraud Manager" is very polite and neatly swerves any direct question. He has however said that this is the only transaction on this card that has ever been taken by Txtloan.
I also reported it to my local police force last week and got an incident number. I asked the police to contact Txtloan to find out who had arranged the scam. Police won't. Full stop! They say it must be reported to them by the loan company!! I email Txtloan, give them the incident number and the name and phone number of the police sergeant I spoke to and ask them to make contact with the police. Txtloan reply saying thats not the way it works and the police should get in touch with them in writing!
I feel like I'm about to explode with frustration! I am the victim of a crime. I have had £117 stolen from me. I have reported it to the bank and the police. Both have said that there is nothing they can do! Neither it seems are willing to contact Txtloan to ask for some very simple information........Whose bank account was the loan originally paid into?
Has anyone any advice on what I can possibly do? If I have been scammed by someone I've never heard of then I shall put it down to experience and be more careful in future. If however it is someone who works for me then they need to be sacked and strung up.
:mad:
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Comments
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How did they get your bank details??0
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I had a similar experience as yourself with Santander and a fraudulent PDL payment. First I knew about it was when the bank sent me text asking me to contact them, which is when I was informed my account was over £800 OD due to a PDL payment being taken to the tune of nearly £1100.
Santander refused to help as a smaller payment for £58 had gone out the month prior to this, so refused to accept I didn't authorise this payment.
I reported it to the police and got an crime ref number.
I have written to the PDL concerned an official complaint regarding their procedures which have allowed this to happen, and demanding my money back. To which I've not received a reply as yet.
If no joy from them I'm writing a complaint to the FOS.
To try and stop this happening again, I've totally changed banks and am closing my Santander account.0 -
How are you going to find out if it was an employee ?
Your very trusting to give a member of staff access to the company account to order various things daily.
In future why dont you order the stuff yourself to prevent the same happening again ?
You sure there is only the 1 payment and not others as the bank suggested ?
Cant help with your question but good luck in the quest.0 -
How are you going to find out if it was an employee ?
Your very trusting to give a member of staff access to the company account to order various things daily.
You sure there is only the 1 payment and not others as the bank suggested ?
If the police ever prosecute then I would hope I would be told who it was? I also think the amount is strange. One payment of £117. At the time there was over £15,000 in the account. They could have taken far more. Perhaps they thought that such a relatively small sum would go unnoticed?
I don't "allow" them access. I meant that it is possible that a member of staff gained access to card/bank details without my permission by seeing/overhearing my details.
Absolutely sure it has only happened once. It would have knocked my reconciliations out of balance.0 -
If the police ever prosecute then I would hope I would be told who it was? I also think the amount is strange. One payment of £117. At the time there was over £15,000 in the account. They could have taken far more. Perhaps they thought that such a relatively small sum would go unnoticed?
I don't "allow" them access. I meant that it is possible that a member of staff gained access to card/bank details without my permission by seeing/overhearing my details.
Absolutely sure it has only happened once. It would have knocked my reconciliations out of balance.
If it was anything like mine, they go for the smaller amount first to see if the set up works, if it does they then go for the larger amount.
The Police said to me that this is done by professional criminals who work within cyber space and tracking them is very difficult as they're usually operating from a different country to ours.0 -
callistris wrote: »The Police said to me that this is done by professional criminals who work within cyber space and tracking them is very difficult as they're usually operating from a different country to ours.
I hope it is a professional cyberspace criminal operating from overseas. I would just like the police/Txtloan to take it seriously and rule out the possibility of it being someone that I know.0 -
If it was they would have cleaned out your account, all 15k. When a online scam artist gets a little money from you they simply keep going until the card is declined.I hope it is a professional cyberspace criminal operating from overseas. I would just like the police/Txtloan to take it seriously and rule out the possibility of it being someone that I know.
This was someone close to you who has your details, either they had access to your card or some other statements. Look closer to home, talk about it openly and look to see who squirms the most.0 -
If the police ever prosecute then I would hope I would be told who it was? I also think the amount is strange. One payment of £117. At the time there was over £15,000 in the account. They could have taken far more. Perhaps they thought that such a relatively small sum would go unnoticed?
I don't "allow" them access. I meant that it is possible that a member of staff gained access to card/bank details without my permission by seeing/overhearing my details.
Ah right i understand so you dont just give the staff the card to use willy nilly. If it was an employee how would you find out to deal with them accordingly ?0 -
I had money taken off my card, turned out it was an East European scam where they have a programme that just goes through random numbers until they hit the jackpot and ones comes up as a card. Fortunately they tried to take out £40,000, the police think they were going for a number with a 4 in it but much smaller to avoid detection, but the 40k rang alarmbells and my bank stopped it before anything happened. So it's possible it's been done like that?0
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All I have to add is this - the bank has to prove you made the payment not the other way round.
Complain first to the bank and after 8 weeks if you are not happy to the ombudsman.0
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