Banking scam

Flobberchops

My advice to the OP: don't pay any more. What is stopping the builder from faking this hacking story (seems suspiciously common, actually) and pocketing the money twice? Ask them to contact both their bank and Action Fraud and try to recover the money that way. If they attempt to take you to court you can point out that *their* email was hacked so the loss was due to insufficient security on their part. In fact this could have been avoided altogether if the builders insisted on more secure payment methods such as cheque or card payment terminal.

Warslet

This type of scam is not so widely advertised to make individuals aware. Your bank will attempt to claim any money from the receiving bank account but it's extremely likely to have been moved again. The result of any possible reimbursement takes time. I fear you may have to pay again as the fencer is out of pocket and could take action against you as not his fault. He may have to change his method of payment or give an invoice on completion of a job.

antrobus

Warslet wrote: »

This type of scam is not so widely advertised to make individuals aware. Your bank will attempt to claim any money from the receiving bank account but it's extremely likely to have been moved again. The result of any possible reimbursement takes time. I fear you may have to pay again as the fencer is out of pocket and could take action against you as not his fault. He may have to change his method of payment or give an invoice on completion of a job.

I disagree. It is very widely advertised.

It is known as an authorised push payment (APP) scam. The likes of the FCA and the PRA have been all over it. The result is that something called 'confirmation of payee' will be coming in sometime next year.

Try to send a payment to a sort code and bank account, and you will get a message saying 'Do you mean to pay Joe Bloggs', so that you will know the name of the destination account.

DennisTenus

antrobus wrote: »

The result is that something called 'confirmation of payee' will be coming in sometime next year.

Try to send a payment to a sort code and bank account, and you will get a message saying 'Do you mean to pay Joe Bloggs', so that you will know the name of the destination account.

Didn't know this. Very interesting. So you won't have to put a payee name? So in theory you could punch in random account numbers/sort code and it will tell you who"s bank account it is?! Surely that breaks GDPR or something. Maybe it will tell you if the name doesn't match with the name you enter instead?

antrobus

DennisTenus wrote: »

Didn't know this. Very interesting. So you won't have to put a payee name? So in theory you could punch in random account numbers/sort code and it will tell you who"s bank account it is?! Surely that breaks GDPR or something. Maybe it will tell you if the name doesn't match with the name you enter instead?

I believe you would enter a payee name as you would now do. The thing is about the payee name is that it is not validated largely because it's harder to validate a text string than a sequence of numbers.

If you send money to 00-00-00 12345678, it's easy for the receiving to check that the account exists. But whilst the payee name might be Joe Bloggs, the account name might be, Mr J Bloggs. J.S. Bloggs, Bloggs Partners, etc and so forth.

I think the idea is that if you intend paying Joe Bloggs, and you get a message 'did you intend to pay Sam Scammer', you should know that something is wrong and cancel the payment.

takman

Flobberchops wrote: »

My advice to the OP: don't pay any more. What is stopping the builder from faking this hacking story (seems suspiciously common, actually) and pocketing the money twice? Ask them to contact both their bank and Action Fraud and try to recover the money that way. If they attempt to take you to court you can point out that *their* email was hacked so the loss was due to insufficient security on their part. In fact this could have been avoided altogether if the builders insisted on more secure payment methods such as cheque or card payment terminal.

Have you not read the thread? Either email account could have been accessed by a third party or neither of them there is no way of knowing for certain from the information provided.

Warslet wrote: »

This type of scam is not so widely advertised to make individuals aware. Your bank will attempt to claim any money from the receiving bank account but it's extremely likely to have been moved again. The result of any possible reimbursement takes time. I fear you may have to pay again as the fencer is out of pocket and could take action against you as not his fault. He may have to change his method of payment or give an invoice on completion of a job.

It's called common sense. If you are provided with two sets of bank details in a 30 minute period by an insecure method of communication then don't send the payment. A sensible person would confirm the correct details first.