Victim of a money transfer scam? You now have new rights with most banks - MSE News

victoria1969

What can I do if the bank says it will not refund my money £5200 after being scammed for buying a car.

dunstonh

victoria1969 said:

What can I do if the bank says it will not refund my money £5200 after being scammed for buying a car.

Why should the bank refund?  What are you alleging that the bank did wrong?

Thrugelmir

Logic dictates that to create a fund. Banks will move increasingly towards fee based accounts. We'll all end up paying for lunch. 

Shakin_Steve

Thrugelmir said:

Logic dictates that to create a fund. Banks will move increasingly towards fee based accounts. We'll all end up paying for lunch. 

That's well overdue.

jonesMUFCforever

victoria1969 said:

What can I do if the bank says it will not refund my money £5200 after being scammed for buying a car.

Sue the person/company you sent the money to.

theoldmiser

What amazes me about Push Payment Fraud is that every time I read a news article about this crime, it NEVER says that the police have arrested the perpetrator or even KNOW who the perpetrator is. So somehow people can open bank accounts without proper checks being done on who they are, and then move large amounts of money which has only just gone into those accounts into other accounts (no doubt abroad), and yet nobody seems to know who these people are, and their (U.K.) bank doesn't notice something unusual about them receiving a large sum of money from a private individual and then immediately sending it to a non-U.K. bank.

Secondly, why haven't all banks sent out leaflets to all of their customers which say very clearly "We will never call you and ask for ANY of your personal information, not your password, and not your 'app code'", and we will never ask you to send any money to a 'different account', claiming that your account has been compromised, etc.etc. If you read the various reports of this crime in the press, you are almost always left without the most important information - i.e .what exact information the perpetrator asked the victim for, which the victim shouldn't have given. It's always glossed over in news reports as if it isn't important, when in fact it's the most important part of the story!

Thirdly, it's quite obvious to me that most, if not all, of the perpetrators of these crimes either work for a bank or are working WITH somebody who works for a bank, who has access to people's accounts, and can therefore sound genuine on the phone by telling their victim about various real payments that have gone out or into their accounts. I presume many people who work for banks have been working from home, with access to customers' accounts through their home computers, so it's much easier for them to commit this sort of crime, as opposed to when they are working in a call centre with colleagues all around them.

theoldmiser

I've also read many articles in which allegedly 'intelligent' people (lawyers, etc.) have been scammed by ridiculously obvious push payment fraudsters. If your 'bank' phones you and tells you that you need to move £10,000 into a different account because  'your account has been compromised', why would you do that? Who is daft enough to believe that their bank would even need to move any money to a different account just because your account has allegedly 'been compromised'. The more of these crimes I read about, the more I despair of supposedly 'responsible' adults' ability to even think about the most basic things sensibly.

theoldmiser

The other thing I keep hearing about is that companies' emails are "intercepted" and bank details on them are changed and then (allegedly) sent on to the victim. How is this done? How is this possible?

It should be standard practice for all customers paying large bills using online banking, to send £10 or some other very small amount to the alleged account of the company they are paying first, then phone up the company after a few hours and ask them if they have received the payment, if so, they then send the remaineder of the bill to the same bank account, knowing that they have got the right account. Why aren't banks recommending this?

tempus_fugit

theoldmiser said:

The other thing I keep hearing about is that companies' emails are "intercepted" and bank details on them are changed and then (allegedly) sent on to the victim. How is this done? How is this possible?

It should be standard practice for all customers paying large bills using online banking, to send £10 or some other very small amount to the alleged account of the company they are paying first, then phone up the company after a few hours and ask them if they have received the payment, if so, they then send the remaineder of the bill to the same bank account, knowing that they have got the right account. Why aren't banks recommending this?

Indeed. And in fact, I have on occasion had my bank stop my second payment on the basis that it "looks fraudulent" to send £1 to a new payee and then follow it with a larger payment. And when you tell them it was to make sure that the payee details were correct (this was before Confirmation of Payee came in, although I don't fully trust that either) they said "Oh, it's probably not a good idea to do that". This at the same time as not supporting many people who had fallen victim to APP scams as well as simple miskeying of bank details when setting up new payments. You'd think they'd have supported such an idea to prevent fraud and money going astray, but no, they said they would probably always block such payments in the future, whilst letting fraudsters seemingly do what they want. It's getting increasingly harder for those of us that know what we are doing to make legitimate payments whilst the fraudsters seem to be able to bypass these things, so I agree with what you are saying in your posts.

ThisnotThat

tempus_fugit said:

theoldmiser said:

The other thing I keep hearing about is that companies' emails are "intercepted" and bank details on them are changed and then (allegedly) sent on to the victim. How is this done? How is this possible?

It should be standard practice for all customers paying large bills using online banking, to send £10 or some other very small amount to the alleged account of the company they are paying first, then phone up the company after a few hours and ask them if they have received the payment, if so, they then send the remaineder of the bill to the same bank account, knowing that they have got the right account. Why aren't banks recommending this?

Indeed. And in fact, I have on occasion had my bank stop my second payment on the basis that it "looks fraudulent" to send £1 to a new payee and then follow it with a larger payment. And when you tell them it was to make sure that the payee details were correct (this was before Confirmation of Payee came in, although I don't fully trust that either) they said "Oh, it's probably not a good idea to do that". This at the same time as not supporting many people who had fallen victim to APP scams as well as simple miskeying of bank details when setting up new payments. You'd think they'd have supported such an idea to prevent fraud and money going astray, but no, they said they would probably always block such payments in the future, whilst letting fraudsters seemingly do what they want. It's getting increasingly harder for those of us that know what we are doing to make legitimate payments whilst the fraudsters seem to be able to bypass these things, so I agree with what you are saying in your posts.

The problem is that's exactly what fraudsters were doing before they empty your account.