Forged cheque nightmare - HSBC making me pay £10,500

Shakin_Steve

The cheque is the key to all of this. Get a copy of the cheque that was presented and see if it actually came from the book you say was at home.
We are starting to go round in circles.

Marksfish

I had a cheque forged on my account many years ago by a lodger. The first I knew was when I got a bank statement with a cheque number on it that didn't exist in my chequebook. I took it to the bank and they showed me where the culprit has removed all evidence of the counterfoil (it was the last cheque in the book), but couldn't remove the small left behind piece under the banding. I also looked at the signature which was just my name printed and nothing like the specimen I had provided. The bank admitted at the time they could not check every signature due to the quantities being processed, but I believe cheques are not so common these days. I also had to file a report with the Police, once that was done, my funds were returned. Your situation however, seems much more complicated than mine.

Terry_Towelling

malacka96 wrote: »

It was in the negatives because of my overdraft, near £-1000, which is why I'm owing more than the cheque's amount - all of which I mentioned in my first post and my first reply to you. First of all everyone else seemed to get that when I said HSBC are my former bank I am speaking in the present time so I don't know how you missed that. Of course I will eventually have to sleep, otherwise I would be dead! (As one dies if they do not sleep at all). But the number of hours of sleep I've been getting since is not good. You do realise that it is possible to cry yourself to sleep, and then still get little sleep right? The action of crying yourself to sleep is just what happens before you do fall asleep, and has no correlation to the actual number of hours you spend sleeping. You are not making sense there. I myself am shocked that I passed my exams, but I still revised and stuck it out despite being under great stress, I had to. Other people have passed exams when going through stressful situations, I know a guy whose father had just died from cancer and he came out with the highest grades in all his exams.

Again, as I mentioned in my post I am worried because I read a multitude of reviews from innocent people saying that the Financial Ombudsman let them down, is biased, favours with the bank when the client is in the right etc.

Okay Okay. The impression I took away from your post was that £9566 was paid in and £10566 was taken out in two goes. I got this impression because you are disputing the entire sum requested by HSBC and that only makes sense if your account had a zero balance when the fraud took place. Now that you have said you were almost £1000 overdrawn at the time of the fraud it is clear that HSBC is correct to at least ask you to pay back the value of that overdraft (which was your spending) and your dispute with them is for £9566 only.

So apologies for seeming not to get it when everyone else apparently did but perhaps you can now see why.

Anyway, I am no stranger to grief/stress and what it can do to you when you try to sleep and function normally. I have lived my life in this state for most of the last 5 years and can recommend it highly for weight loss.

The FOS may well look at this case from the point of view of 'Did HSBC do anything wrong in asking you to pay back the money, were you grossly negligent in allowing your security details to be stolen by someone else and did HSBC act negligently in allowing the value of a worthless cheque of significant value to be withdrawn?' Given that (at this point) we are assuming that cheque was drawn on your current account when it was already in a overdraft situation and the cheque couldn't possibly have cleared because there were no cleared funds to draw on, it would seem likely that HSBC acted very oddly. That's why I posited my fantasy theory about intra-customer transfers of uncleared funds in a previous post and you probably have nothing to worry about unless they can show you were complicit in the fraud.

Are we back on track now?

GaleSF63

malacka96 wrote: »

No cheques have been used in my chequebook so there are none missing.

You've said you haven't used your cheque book and it's at home (implying safe) but have you actually been through it cheque by cheque to make sure there isn't one missing?

I believe the first one will always end with 1 and the last with 0 (just to be sure the first or last hasn't been removed.

Uxb

Not necessarily
My current cheque book starts in ....26 and ends in ...50
the the next one starts in 51 and ends in 75

DCFC79

GaleSF63 wrote: »

You've said you haven't used your cheque book and it's at home (implying safe) but have you actually been through it cheque by cheque to make sure there isn't one missing?

I believe the first one will always end with 1 and the last with 0 (just to be sure the first or last hasn't been removed.

Ive only ever known cheque books start on 1 and last one for example ends at like 49 then next book is 50 to 89.

ChrisK....._3

Well sometimes we just have to take irresponsible behaviour on the chin instead of looking to blaming everyone else - thats what the judge will think/say/execute

colsten wrote: »

Thank you for trying to be constructive and helpful. Not.

ChrisK..... wrote: »

Some people are simply not responsible enough to be given control of a car or a bank account and should just keep the cash under their mattress where they can control it[

malacka96 wrote: »

.... I had received a call a few weeks prior with someone posing to be HSBC staff, saying that they are updating the system and need to confirm my security details for my internet banking, that if I did not confirm my details my account would get wiped off the system and I would no longer be able to access it online. They were so believable, and I was very naive but fell for it!! I believed it to really be HSBC and never thought that it could be fraudsters....
.

warby68

OP, I think you need someone in real life to support you. Your parents? A tutor, even a friend.

Then you need to see through the Ombudsman process to the end.

You need to be able to approach it with some clarity though and whilst undoubtedly you feel dreadful and your stress and emotions are real, putting all the emphasis on these in the hope that someone takes pity on you as a young victim is unlikely to work.

Sorry if that sounds unkind - I just mean you do need to get a grip of the facts to plead your case in a clear way so that someone can objectively decide how much you were to blame and how much the Bank were to blame for what happened.

My take on what happened is that this does seem like a planned out fraud given the multiple stages. Someone accessed or reset your online banking details after the phone call and possibly obtained a new cheque book. Then paid money from one of your accounts into the other and switched it back before the original payment method had cleared. This enabled the individual to make the electronic payments out of your current account without drawing attention at the time from an 'artificial' credit balance. The events only came to light when the original cheque bounced and you became overdrawn to the higher amount.

I don't know how these phone calls to extract banking details are viewed. There are numerous warnings not to give your details out to anyone so the line might be quite firm these days. However if you are able to recall the details of the call and the sophistication of it and any reasons you might have had for falling for it, this may help.

The cheque number should tell you whether it was from a cheque book you had ever had in your possession and whether the signature should be challenged. Was your address ever changed online? Things like that.

The payments out are of quite a high amount (although I suspect still below certain key limits) for a student account - I suppose you could check or query whether the Bank had the correct settings on your account. It more than likely did but unusual transactions are sometimes flagged and there may be some judgement call to query there.

The main challenge from your side would be what is 'wrong' with the system that allowed the money to be paid out to third parties before the cheque had cleared.

You need copies of everything (don't tear up any more letters)

If you suspect an ex, presumably you have reported them with what information you have about them.

I know you're at the end of your tether but it really isn't going to go away on its own so some big deep breaths and working through it with some personal support and guidance will probably be best.

Please note that there is a large element of 'joining the dots' here from what you have said to render a likely scenario. Information is patchy and things may have gone down completely differently.I do not know how HSBC works internally with regard to cleared and uncleared funds but it does seem this is the key aspect which allowed the money to be 'lost' which the Bank rather than yourself could control.

To encourage people reviewing your case to think positively I would also acknowledge your responsibility for the original amount of student overdraft and indicate a willingness to repay that in due course.

amilbourn

Would agree you need assistance to get some clarity. Some points:
1. Try to get your student's union to provide some assistance and report it to them as abuse.
2. Get your student's union to put pressure on college Student Services to help.
2. Report this as abuse to the police, they take it a bit more seriously.
4. If you don't get any progress from the college escalate by writing directly to the Head of Student Services, VIce Chancellor etc.

colsten

amilbourn wrote: »

Would agree you need assistance to get some clarity. Some points:
1. Try to get your student's union to provide some assistance and report it to them as abuse.
2. Get your student's union to put pressure on college Student Services to help.
2. Report this as abuse to the police, they take it a bit more seriously.
4. If you don't get any progress from the college escalate by writing directly to the Head of Student Services, VIce Chancellor etc.

No point in running before she can walk. She first needs to get all her facts and evidence together before making any accusations. As has already been pointed out, nobody can help if the facts aren't known, and whilst there is confusion about what happened.