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Rental scam
Ian1892
Posts: 1 Newbie
About a month ago I got scammed for £600, I put a wanted advert online for a 1 bed property and I fell for the scam and paid the fake landlord £600 through online banking. I contacted my banks fraud team and they dealt with it. So after 3-4 weeks I called my bank and they said they could only get £21 back to me. Does anyone know how to take this a step further as I think I should be getting more of my money back. I'll be greatfull for any help.
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Comments
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do you have the details of the person you paid the money to to take them to the small claims court for not providing what you paid for? have you reported with Action Fraud? did you actually see a property that you paid this money for? If this was Gumtree there are many warnings...0
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Gumtree is scam central, never pay money to people you don't know or never seen the product yourself."It is prudent when shopping for something important, not to limit yourself to Pound land/Estate Agents"
G_M/ Bowlhead99 RIP0 -
You need to post on the banking forum as this isn't really anything to do with renting, any more than if you'd bought a boat an that turned out to be non existent, youd post on a boating forum.
With a few exceptions, banks aren't responsible for rectifying payments made voluntarily that didn't work out. For example let's say you bought a car and the car broke down, they won't recompense you. Even if it's direct fraud they won't usually get involved if you instigated the payment. If as said you know the person then you can start court proceedings however the fact you got a small amount of money back most likely means this was an intermediate bank account and they grabbed what was left and the actual theif has long gone.
In the highly unlikely event you can actually track this down to a real,person you can start court proceedings but I'd guess you can't. Seems to me with most items on Gumtree you might as well set fire to your money rather than go through a long drawn out process to lose it.0 -
Did you pay via bank transfer?
It certainly was the case that if you pay someone via this method then there wasn't much banks could do to get your money back. The banks relied on the goodwill of the person to refund the money and a scammer isn't going to do that. I did hear that banks would be more proactive now in getting your money back if it was just a case of mistyping a number on the bank account, but I'm not sure why they would be liable if you knowingly sent the money to the correct of a scammer.
Where did the £21 come from?0 -
seashore22 wrote: »Did you pay via bank transfer?
It certainly was the case that if you pay someone via this method then there wasn't much banks could do to get your money back. The banks relied on the goodwill of the person to refund the money and a scammer isn't going to do that. I did hear that banks would be more proactive now in getting your money back if it was just a case of mistyping a number on the bank account, but I'm not sure why they would be liable if you knowingly sent the money to the correct of a scammer.
Where did the £21 come from?
I assumed that was all that was left in the scammers bank account.0 -
It might be that, but I didn't think a bank could just take money back from another bank account. Maybe they can now, but without more information we can't be sure.0
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I assumed that was all that was left in the scammers bank account.
Yes, but most likely that is an intermediates bank account, some dumbwit "working from home" receiving payments and sending them on for a small commission. The fact they got it back pretty much proves its a known fraudulent account and the actual scammer will most likely be at the end of a chain of such transfers and long gone.
OP's only hope is to find out when it was known this bank account (with £21 in it) was fraudulent. If it was known before he transferred he can claim the receiving bank (not his bank unless its the same one) had a duty of care not to accept payments. People have got their money back on this basis before but its been where tens to hundreds of thousands have been involved and it was worth instigating a legal case0
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