Major APP fraud - Barclays refusing to reimburse

SFindlay

AnotherJoe said:

eskbanker said:

AnotherJoe said:

a reminder that this appears to be an out and out scam and Barclays froze the recipient account, so I don't understand why they didn't find in his ofavour

The fact that they're obliged to freeze an account in response to a scam allegation doesn't mean that they should accept responsibility for the scam in the first place, i.e. once OP alleges it's a scam they may agree but that doesn't make them liable to reimburse, given that OP ignored the warning....

Assuming that the fraudster is impersonating a company Then I think Barclays woudl be clearly colluding with fraud by allowing someone who used false details to sign up for a bank account to revive the money and should at least have passed this to the authorities. 

You can only collude with something when knowing the event is taking place (defenition - cooperate in a secret or unlawful way in order to deceive or gain an advantage over others) and in any case you can't collude in a fraud, you either commit Fraud or don't and I don't think anyone in wildest imagination can say Barclays have committed a Fraud!! 
This is whats wrong with people, always wanting to make a claim instead of taking responsibility for their own actions!! I can guarantee if T&C of alleged account had been properly read it would have shown inconsistencies and if having doubts a simple phone call to true company before rather than after sending money would have confirmed the doubts. 

AnotherJoe

Zanderman said:

bowlhead99 said:

Also OP have you contacted one of the major newspaper financial help columnists? Times, Telegraph for example? 

That would seem to be a good place to go because even if the bank has no legal or moral obligation to pay out for something that wasn't their fault, they may prefer to get some positive publicity from it.  Times Money often publishes success stories (though granted they only have 50 weekends a year to write about them and must get thousands or request for help).

Can't hurt to try, though the papers do also publish cautionary tales where the service provider doesn't budge. The bank would presumably not want to open the floodgates for every similar claim, so may have something akin to a policy of 'deny every claim, don't tell the newspapers we will pay up if the customer badgers us enough...'

I think all the papers do this - as well as the Times the Guardian money pages often have stories about this sort of thing and sometimes get results when the individual has failed to. I'm sure the Telegraph, Mail etc do the same.
But, as bowlhead says, they must have loads of people writing in.  So they can pick and choose.  And they won't always be successful and might actually just flag it as a cautionary tale - as that is, let's face it (and that includes you OP!) what this is - a cautionary tale.
The bank did nothing wrong, the OP over-rode their concern and questions - so this is entirely the OP's fault.  The OP only thought to double-check afterwards.  
Getting recompense for this would be wrong.  
 

I woudl say that allowing soemone to fraudulently open  a bank account, most likely using false details, and letting them retain monies paid in, counts as "something wrong".

bowlhead99

AnotherJoe said:
I woudl say that allowing soemone to fraudulently open  a bank account, most likely using false details, and letting them retain monies paid in, counts as "something wrong". 

I don't think the idea that Barclays should not 'help' a fraudster is disputed, and people are not suggesting that the situation here is 'all fine and dandy'.

But as colsten said, you have no evidence of what happened behind the scenes in terms of 'should at least have passed this to the authorities' etc.  Banks when they suspect financial crime or money laundering will flag things internally and make reports to authorities, generally while avoiding trying to 'tip off' the suspected criminal. They may not have known that the account was using false details until they received the call from the OP to say that OP had been duped into sending money there as part of a deception, especially given the OP had said they legitimately wanted to pay money to that account some time earlier.

They will not necessarily be able to freeze funds and prevent them being disbursed somewhere else, even if they are able to act quickly. Sometimes accounts can be emptied quickly, and money disbursed far and wide quite rapidly (and there are all sorts of frauds that rely on that being possible).  

colsten

bowlhead99 said:

They may not have known that the account was using false details .....

Another possibility is that the account of the fraudster may not even have used false details. 

All we can reasonably conclude is that the account was used for fraudulent purposes, and the OP reports that "Barclays froze the account within an hour". Although it would be unusual if a bank told you that they froze the account of another person or company.

I'd still be interested in understanding what sort of savings account the OP wanted to transfer his money to, and why he didn't transfer to that savings account himself, or ask Barclays to send the money for him.

Zanderman

AnotherJoe said:

Zanderman said:

bowlhead99 said:

Also OP have you contacted one of the major newspaper financial help columnists? Times, Telegraph for example? 

That would seem to be a good place to go because even if the bank has no legal or moral obligation to pay out for something that wasn't their fault, they may prefer to get some positive publicity from it.  Times Money often publishes success stories (though granted they only have 50 weekends a year to write about them and must get thousands or request for help).

Can't hurt to try, though the papers do also publish cautionary tales where the service provider doesn't budge. The bank would presumably not want to open the floodgates for every similar claim, so may have something akin to a policy of 'deny every claim, don't tell the newspapers we will pay up if the customer badgers us enough...'

I think all the papers do this - as well as the Times the Guardian money pages often have stories about this sort of thing and sometimes get results when the individual has failed to. I'm sure the Telegraph, Mail etc do the same.
But, as bowlhead says, they must have loads of people writing in.  So they can pick and choose.  And they won't always be successful and might actually just flag it as a cautionary tale - as that is, let's face it (and that includes you OP!) what this is - a cautionary tale.
The bank did nothing wrong, the OP over-rode their concern and questions - so this is entirely the OP's fault.  The OP only thought to double-check afterwards.  
Getting recompense for this would be wrong.  
 

I woudl say that allowing soemone to fraudulently open  a bank account, most likely using false details, and letting them retain monies paid in, counts as "something wrong".

You're mixing two things up.

The OP has no case.  The bank did nothing wrong.  They queried his request.  He gave them the go ahead in spite of their query.. He's due no compo. It would be wrong if he did.  That's the wrong I'm talking about - and that's the subject of the thread.

You're talking about a different issue (which may not even exist).  The fraudster may have opened a bank account fraudulently - though we have absolutely no evidence of that.  If he did, and the bank were negligent - though we have no evidence of that either - then the bank are in the wrong - wrongly opening the account. 

But that's got nothing to do with the OP confirming he wanted to transfer money to it.  That's his fault alone.

bowlhead99

colsten said:
All we can reasonably conclude is that the account was used for fraudulent purposes, and the OP reports that "Barclays froze the account within an hour". Although it would be unusual if a bank told you that they froze the account of another person or company.

Yes, and just because someone on a customer service phone line says, 'as it's a Barclays account, we can freeze it', it doesn't mean the person on the phone line has literally already 'frozen' it for all transactions, which they wouldn't do without the authority to go ahead and do that from their senior compliance people according to whatever internal framework they operate, and perhaps some interaction with national crime agency, police etc.

TimSynths

For anyone else that may be thinking about Googling the best savings accounts there is some good advice from the FCA here- 
https://www.fca.org.uk/consumers
Also tells you how to report a scam too.

masonic

Having just set up a new payee and been subjected to one of these security calls, all I can say is the banks really seem to be stepping up their game on this issue. I was read a script detailing all the common variants of this fraud, then questioned about what prompted me to make the transfer, whether anyone had asked me to make it, whether anyone had called me in relation to it (or was on another line helping me navigate this call), and how I knew the account definitely belonged to me. It was also made very clear that the bank believed there was a high risk this transfer was fraudulent and I could overrule them, but would have no right to a refund if they were correct and the money couldn't be recovered.

Only then did they let through the £1 transfer, which was credited to my other current account straight away.

happy_hazelnuts

i bet that was lloyds !

Swipe

Santander presented me with the same set of multiple are you sure statements when I sent to a new payee. They basically warned that I I click send I would have no comeback. I always send £1 first to test and then reuse the payee when the £1 arrives.