Been scammed, builder had his email hacked - phishing

Biggles

mattaus wrote: »

Thanks for this, I read that article a few weeks ago.

You'd read the article, yet you still didn't ring the builder to check?

It's a known scam, it existed even before email (you would get a letter, looking like your contractor's letterhead, asking you to pay to a new bank account). I would ALWAYS ring and check; there's no substitute for it.

I don't think you would have any success whatever in court. Councils that it's happened to, due to lazy staff who didn't check, have always had to write the money off AFAIK.

martinsurrey

Biggles wrote: »

I don't think you would have any success whatever in court. Councils that it's happened to, due to lazy staff who didn't check, have always had to write the money off AFAIK.

business to business, is VERY different.

Can you link to any of the cases please, haven't seen any court reports on it before.

mattaus

Biggles wrote: »

You'd read the article, yet you still didn't ring the builder to check?

It's a known scam, it existed even before email (you would get a letter, looking like your contractor's letterhead, asking you to pay to a new bank account). I would ALWAYS ring and check; there's no substitute for it.

I don't think you would have any success whatever in court. Councils that it's happened to, due to lazy staff who didn't check, have always had to write the money off AFAIK.

This was all after the scam happened, please understand that receiving the email I thought it was all legit. Everything else all happened after, you only read things and find things out after the crime had happened. Not enough public awareness from banks etc

mattaus

Aylesbury_Duck wrote: »

Alarm bells ringing here, too. It's not beyond belief that the builder might be getting 150% of his final payment out of this. I wouldn't recommend paying anything more until you hear from the police and the banks.

I dont think so. Also are you suppose to ask tradesmen now what email account they have and do you have insurance to cover cyber crime?

Its all been referred to the cyber crime police dept in London

Warwick_Hunt

mattaus wrote: »

I dont think so. Also are you suppose to ask tradesmen now what email account they have and do you have insurance to cover cyber crime?

Its all been referred to the cyber crime police dept in London

You know it's gone to the City of London Police for investigation or are you assuming it has?

You may well find nothing is done and you are left out of pocket.

mattaus

Warwick_Hunt wrote: »

You know it's gone to the City of London Police for investigation or are you assuming it has?

You may well find nothing is done and you are left out of pocket.

According to Action Fraud it has gone there

Warwick_Hunt

mattaus wrote: »

According to Action Fraud it has gone there

Unless you're talking a vast sum of cash they'll either file it or return it to your local police to file.

Head_The_Ball

mattaus wrote: »

Because that only happened afterwards if you read the post

I did read your posts and there is no obvious timeline in there.

In your first post you wrote: 'I thought it was a bit odd'

and in post 20 you wrote:

mattaus wrote: »

Yeah everything was the exact same, same email address, same company logo, it was part of the ongoing email conversations as this was how we arranged things, I even had my friend who is an IT expert to check the email address (inspect)

There is nothing in that post that informs us when you asked your expert friend to check the email. (Asking him afterwards was closing the stable door after the horse has bolted).

As others have posted, there is a possibility that the builder is in on the scam. Offering 50/50 sounds dodgy to me.

You could withhold any further payment and see what develops. Pass on your suspicions to the banks and police and await developments.

mattaus

I have raised my complaint to Natwest via the Financial Ombudsman as Natwest simply haven't come back to me.
Keep you all posted if your interested

Warwick_Hunt

mattaus wrote: »

I have raised my complaint to Natwest via the Financial Ombudsman as Natwest simply haven't come back to me.
Keep you all posted if your interested

What have NatWest done wrong?