Making a small claims court against a bank for hosting a fraudulent cloned company account

amadeus16

To Money Saving Experts,

                                                I came across your website online due to becoming a victim of a cloned company that hosted a business account at a Bank of YYY. At the time it was unknown to the law and online that this was a cloned company. My own bank XXX and I tried to contact XXX but checked the details of the account and it came up as a legitimate business account. This was in August 2018 (so it before the January 2019 cut off point where the Financial Ombudsman service will step in for these type of cases. By the time I sent the money and by the time I found out it was a cloned account it was too late to retract the payment. My bank XXX checked with the Bank of YYY to see if this fraudulent group still had any remaining funds. The host bank of the fraudsters said no. I raised this with the Financial Ombudsman Service, tried to claim from the Bank of YYY (fraudster account hoster) based on their negligence for allowing such an account to be created for fraudulent investor & insurance group via my own bank (as advised by the National Fraud Investigation Bureau) but to no avail. I tried making a claim directly myself and this has taken months to sort out. A couple of weeks ago they  only offered 75 pounds compensation and cost of calls/possible time loss from this. I did suggest sending the general business account creation process or message around this could black out names for confidentiality but to no avail. They were also unable to tell me how this business account was created in the first place for GDPR reasons. This is a bit of a disappointment naturally. However, I've heard it still be possible to make a claim against them via the small claims court. If this is true is it possible to get some advice about this and whether I'm eligible and have a likely case before applying to the small claims court. If you can get back to me about this as soon as possible it would be much appreciated. Thank you.

[Deleted User]

I wouldn't throw any more of your money away.

£75 is a very decent offer, as they have no liability.