Bank payment to incorrect person

muppetdodger

In short, in October I paid an amount of £1724.40 to a person who did some work for me. What I didn't realize was that I had an incorrect recipient registered that had the same name on it as the one I wanted to use. I paid the money to the wrong account. When I realized in December it had gone to the wrong person I told Lloyds, my bank, and they contacted RBS, the other bank, to ask for the money back. RBS said their customer had refused to return it and that was an end to it.


Now Lloyds wrote to me to say this was their reply and they also told me to take legal advice (ie Small Claims) or go to an independent financial advisory service. They also said that due to data protection RBS wouldn't disclose who had my money.


That being the case, if I go to small claims who am I claiming from?


I'm not sure where to go from here, does anyone have any advice that would be helpful or an authority I can go to?


Many thanks, Ben

BMN

You would need the name and address of the account holder in order to take civil legal action against them.

I am led to believe that something called a "Norwich Pharmacal Order" is required for those details to be revealed. Perhaps somebody else here will have a better idea about how you can go about getting that done.

You can also go to the police. I suspect they might decline to take the case on but technically this is a form of theft (dishonestly retaining a wrongful credit) so maybe you can convince them on those grounds.

Archi_Bald

As the wrong person was on your payee list, surely you know the name of the recipient? So all you'd still need to take this person to Court is their address, which you might also have?

Anthorn

This comes up in the forums from time to time and last time I saw this the conclusion was that it's your own fault that you paid them the money and basically you are dependent on the goodwill of the person you paid it to - if you can find out who they are! The police are unlikely to get involved since no crime has been committed. Transfers can be stopped but you need to act quickly before it is claimed by the destination bank.

In short, you authorised the bank to pay the money so it's your own fault and not the fault of the bank so they are unlikely to do anything about it!

block10

I would take RBS to the small claims court for withholding details and for not returning the payment.

"Known as a Norwich Pharmacal Order - The High Court judgment gave the bank the right to demand personal details of a customer of another bank so that it could claw back money paid into the account"

jonesMUFCforever

block10 wrote: »

I would take RBS to the small claims court for withholding details and for not returning the payment.

"Known as a Norwich Pharmacal Order - The High Court judgment gave the bank the right to demand personal details of a customer of another bank so that it could claw back money paid into the account"

That's a stupid comment from someone who obviously does not know that a bank has to keep information about its customers to itself unless a court order forces them to divulge information.
The right way forward is to get a court order to get the bank to hand over the information - but this will cost - OP may well then win in court but will have to pay the court fee - then what if the judge says ok you win but you will get £1 per month in repayments.

mgdavid

muppetdodger wrote: »

In short, in October I paid an amount of £1724.40 to a person who did some work for me. What I didn't realize was that I had an incorrect recipient registered that had the same name on it as the one I wanted to use. I paid the money to the wrong account. .......

OP, are you saying you already had a payee registered on your system who had the same name ? If so, then you know where the money has gone, you know their name and I imagine know their address or at least how to get hold of it.
If this is true then all the other posts arguing about court orders etc are irrelevant. Can you confirm and/or give us clearer details?

System

As the bank is an innocent 3rd party then the OP would also have to pay their legal fees when going down the NPO route. I don't know whether they would then be able to claim ALL costs from the person holding the money

eskbanker

Anthorn wrote: »

The police are unlikely to get involved since no crime has been committed

By deliberately retaining money known not to be theirs, the recipient has committed the crime of theft by finding, of which a number of people have been convicted in similar circumstances. However, knowing that a crime has been committed and actually being able to initiate proceedings and/or recover the funds are unfortunately two different things....

Anthorn

eskbanker wrote: »

By deliberately retaining money known not to be theirs, the recipient has committed the crime of theft by finding, of which a number of people have been convicted in similar circumstances. However, knowing that a crime has been committed and actually being able to initiate proceedings and/or recover the funds are unfortunately two different things....

The recipient or shall we call them the beneficiary hasn't found the money, it was willingly given to them. No different to giving some stranger in the street 50 quid.

eskbanker

It was mistakenly passed to the recipient, but how it got there is less relevant, it's the act of refusing to return it (in the full knowledge it was a mistake) that is the crime....