Banks legally unable to investigate illegal transfer of funds

p00hsticks

littlerock wrote: »

The newspaper said more than 19,000 people lost a total of over £100 million in online frauds like this in the first 6 months of this year.

Further cases and a breakdown of the figures available here
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/savings/latest-bank-transfer-fraud-victims-lost-113665-now-homeless/

Moral of the story is check and double check when you are transferring money that you have the legitimate sort code and account number - don't rely on e-mail

p00hsticks

derps wrote: »

What sort of "investigation" do you expect the banks to do in these circumstances, exactly?

I'd expect Barclays to be looking back at what id checks they did on the person who opened the account that the money was transferred into, since the whole point of these ever more stringent ID checks is supposedly to try to prevent money launderers opening accounts to use for these purposes.

msallen

It would not be acceptable for banks to have the authority to go around looking into bank accounts they don't control any time they wanted, or removing money from person B's account on the say so of person A.

The only time these actions may be necessary are when a crime has happened, and if it is a crime then the police do the investigating, with the bank's (duly authorised) assistance.

phillw

msallen wrote: »

and if it is a crime then the police do the investigating, with the bank's (duly authorised) assistance.

This doesn't happen.

takman

littlerock wrote: »

I am a bit surprised at the tone of some of these replies. There does not seem to be any dispute in this case that the woman was subject to an email hacking scam of some sort. Indeed I have read of a number of these this year where someone's company email account is hacked by criminals who then lead the owner to transfer money to a fake account.

Like I said above it is extremely unlikely the person email account was actually hacked. To carry out this scam you don't even need access to the persons email account and no hacking is required. If they did access the account to get information them this is usually done by getting the persons password by some kind of phishing attempt or similar.

If people keep blaming it on hacking and make out they are entirely faultless them I'm not surprised so many people are falling for it. People need to take more responsibility for their online security.

tempus_fugit

littlerock wrote: »

I am a bit surprised at the tone of some of these replies. There does not seem to be any dispute in this case that the woman was subject to an email hacking scam of some sort. Indeed I have read of a number of these this year where someone's company email account is hacked by criminals who then lead the owner to transfer money to a fake account.

That's not hacking, that's phishing. Hacking is where they have actually obtained control of the email account by obtaining the password or some other means, a different thing entirely.

meer53

phillw wrote: »

This doesn't happen.

Yes it does.

bigadaj

As well as people taking responsibility and using soem thought before transferring large sums without checking the receiving account is correct, the response of the receiving bank seems poor to me.

I can't see that natwest have done anything wrong but Barclays should have better knowledge of the person operating the account that abs received the sum, we all have to jump though hoops to open accounts now but apparently Barclays have no information on who has been operating that account they hold.

derps

GET DOWN ON THE GROUND, WE'RE HERE TO COLLECT A £12 LATE PAYMENT CHARGE

littlerock

I have a Barclays account and they put me through all sorts of hoops when I want to transfer large sums to another account, money on hold, phone calls to me to identify myself etc. I also know from trying to open a Barclays account for my late mother, how many hoops they make you go through to open an account. Closing an account is a whole other ball game.

Yet the thieves in this case seem to have opened a valid Barclays account, and transferred out several large sums of money to empty the account, in a short space of time, without arising any concern in the Barclays system. Just to open an account the fraudster must have had a legitimate address and proof of identify.

And if the police say they have no time to investigate, you are screwed and it seems, Barclays will allow the scamster to go on using a quasi legitimate account for frauds. Banks are supposed tonnage a duty of care to minimise fraud but do not seem to doing so.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/savings/victim-fraud-take-bank-court/