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

colsten

warby68 wrote: »

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.

It has been common practice for decades that banks allow people to use uncleared cheque funds

T+3 is the day the funds are available for you to withdraw or use in another transaction. In this example, on Thursday. Please note, if you withdraw or use the funds at this point, it would be at your own risk as the cheque could still bounce. If the cheque bounces, those funds will be debited.

https://www.hsbc.co.uk/help/banking-made-easy/cheque-clearing/

There is therefore, IMO, not a lot of mileage in trying to claim HSBC acted negligently by allowing the funds to be withdrawn before the cheque had cleared (if this is indeed what happened)

HSBC will also have a record of how the withdrawals were made. If they were made online, a SecureKey would have been needed to set up the recipient(s) - unless the OP had previously already sent some money to them. This would either have been the physical SecureKey, or a virtual one, generated by the HSBC app. The OP should be asking HSBC to tell her which method was used, and when. If the withdrawals, or requests for a physical SecureKey, were made online, the person making the withdrawals would have needed to be in possession of the OP's physical SecureKey gadget, and have known the PIN for it. It the virtual SecureKey was used, they would have had to have had the OP's mobile at the time, as the OP's app is linked to the OP's physical device.

Terry_Towelling

Nice one, @colsten but I suspect HSBC will not be allowed to completely sidestep liability and will be obliged to share some of the risk of their own ill-advised practice. My bank doesn't allow me to draw on uncleared funds at all - although they are now bringing in a system to clear cheques more rapidly than their current 6 days.

Does seem strange that HSBC would allow quite so much uncleared funding to be used, especially as the withdrawal sent OP straight back to £1K OD. That sounds like poor banking practice.

So, looks like it's much more simple than we thought. It doesn't matter what account the cheque was drawn on but it is easier to stitch someone up (or make it appear so) by using one of their own accounts. The fraud just relies on the bank allowing uncleared funds to be used. Frankly, HSBC's website help information saying that using uncleared funds is at your own risk may not be worth much if the account holder claims to have been duped and didn't actually use them.

HSBC now have to prove that OP was negligent with their security details in order to make their claim stick and if they haven't managed to do this in the past 9 months they probably never will. Looks like OP is in the clear - apart from the £1K overdraft of their own spending. That said, if OP's disclosures in this thread (room and phone access to a cunning, accusing and frightening third party) ever come to the attention of HSBC's fraud dept (unlikely), there might be more mileage in this case.

This fraud technique is a licence to print money - every dishonest person in the land could now try this. You could be duped into it or you could easily create a scenario whereby you do it all yourself and claim to have been duped.

colsten

Terry_Towelling wrote: »

HSBC now have to prove that OP was negligent with their security details in order to make their claim stick and if they haven't managed to do this in the past 9 months they probably never will.

That will be relatively easy to do for HSBC if the withdrawals were made online or via the app. On the face of it, either the OP was negligent with her login credentials, or she made the withdrawals herself. But let's wait for additional details from the OP as we are only speculating.

callum9999

colsten wrote: »

That will be relatively easy to do for HSBC if the withdrawals were made online or via the app. On the face of it, either the OP was negligent with her login credentials, or she made the withdrawals herself. But let's wait for additional details from the OP as we are only speculating.

She's clearly been negligent, but don't the authorities use a different standard to what we'd normally use? Otherwise I don't know how all the gullible people giving out their security details have been getting their money back up until now!

I also don't recall it being particularly hard to change the securekey device. I've had to do it a few times and it seems like the fraudster would have more than enough information to change it to their phone.

sheramber

I guess we are not going get an update on this.

badger09

sheramber wrote: »

I guess we are not going get an update on this.

Were you expecting one? Really?:cool:

tempus_fugit

Samsung_Note2 wrote: »

Hit the link as it pretty much sums it all up...:D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXzUde5DMUo&list=RDtXzUde5DMUo&start_radio=1&t=4

Ha ha, brilliant.

Migster

Terry_Towelling wrote: »

Nice one, @colsten but I suspect HSBC will not be allowed to completely sidestep liability and will be obliged to share some of the risk of their own ill-advised practice. My bank doesn't allow me to draw on uncleared funds at all - although they are now bringing in a system to clear cheques more rapidly than their current 6 days.

This isn't a policy specific to HSBC. The 2-4-6 timescales for cheque clearing have been in place for a number of years and apply to all banks. You are paid interest by day 2, have access to the funds by day 4 and can be certain the cheque has cleared (won't bounce) by day 6.

malacka96

Hi, I'm sorry I have been away in the hospital. Thanks for the further helpful responses.

So I found out even more upsetting information. A bank account was set up in my name with Ulster Bank and this cheque was paid into my actual HSBC bank account from the fake account. I'm currently in contact with Ulster Bank to see if they have any CCTV footage from when the account was set up to find the culprit and refer to the police and ombudsman.

Ed-1

malacka96 wrote: »

Hi, I'm sorry I have been away in the hospital. Thanks for the further helpful responses.

So I found out even more upsetting information. A bank account was set up in my name with Ulster Bank and this cheque was paid into my actual HSBC bank account from the fake account. I'm currently in contact with Ulster Bank to see if they have any CCTV footage from when the account was set up to find the culprit and refer to the police and ombudsman.

The account will almost certainly have been applied for online.