My dad has been scammed out of £19,000

colsten

The facts seem to imply that Nat West allowed a payee change without a card reader so hopefully this will strengthen your grounds for complaint. In any case, unless someone has been grossly negligent the bank 'must' refund the full amount.

Is it so difficult to understand that the only thing that can be changed in Natwest online banking for an existing payee is the Reference? 

AWOL84 said:

Online banking is suspended so cannot log in to check so I don’t know this information. 

The payee name that was updated was an old payee who my dad sent a small figure to back in November last year.

@Awol84 Can you tell us who that "old" payee is? A relative / friend / other private person? A company? A charity? 

What was the Reference changed to?

How do you / your father know that the payment actually went to that payee? You can have umpteen payees with the same name.The difference would be in the sort code / account number. Any payments you make to a payee only show the payee name, not the sort code and account number, in both online banking and in the app. You cannot see any more information, but Natwest clearly can. The actual payee details may or may not be stored in the payee list.

I am beginning to think the payment(s) have actually not been made to the "old" payee at all, but that they were made to a totally different sort code & account number. The scamster just used the name of an existing payee to confuse matters for your father. Natwest will, however, know where the payment has been made to.

colsten

@AWOL84 more questions if I may:

Where is your father's debit card for the scammed account?
When did he last use it?
Does any third party have access to your parents' post (authorised or unauthorised)?

Ergates

colsten said:

The real question is why, after years and years of publicity and despite prominent warnings in online banking, do people still fall for those telephone calls.

In simple terms:  Because the scammers are very good at what they do.  They do this all day, every day - it's their job, so they get a lot of practice.  They always coming up with new tricks, new approaches, new ways to manipulate people.

colsten

Ergates said:

colsten said:

The real question is why, after years and years of publicity and despite prominent warnings in online banking, do people still fall for those telephone calls.

In simple terms:  Because the scammers are very good at what they do.  They do this all day, every day - it's their job, so they get a lot of practice.  They always coming up with new tricks, new approaches, new ways to manipulate people.

Whatever happened to personal responsibility? "The scammers used new tricks on me, it's not my fault"

It's not as if there aren't warning all over the place about unsolicited phone calls, about requests to transfer money to a 'safe place', and about requests of total strangers to help you fix a problem on your PC / with your broadband / with your bank account etc etc.

It can't be too hard to remember to put the phone down on any unsolicited callers, can it.

Mickey666

Ergates said:

colsten said:

The real question is why, after years and years of publicity and despite prominent warnings in online banking, do people still fall for those telephone calls.

In simple terms:  Because the scammers are very good at what they do.  They do this all day, every day - it's their job, so they get a lot of practice.  They always coming up with new tricks, new approaches, new ways to manipulate people.

Indeed.  And they play a percentage game . . . only a small minority of people will be fooled but it costs the scammers little time or effort to make a phone call only to be almost immediately cut-off by the large majority of people who can see the scam for what it is.  But when the rewards can be into five figures, as in this sad case, then it makes it all worthwhile.

I remember receiving my first telephone call from 'Microsoft Support' telling me my PC had a virus.  After a split second of thinking how sophisticated they must be to be able to keep track of all the millions, nay billions, of PCs running their software, it was obvious that it was practically impossible for them to actually know, let alone to contact me by phone to talk about it.  After that, I just used to have a little fun with them, if I had time, by stringing them along before mentioning that I was using an Apple Mac and could that be why I couldn't find the file they were trying to get me to find to prove their point   That usually got THEM slamming down the phone instead of me

Also, don't forget that scams are not a new thing suddenly enabled by the online revolution, they've gone on for years before computers were even invented, centuries before probably.

[Deleted User]

Regardless of the outcome, you need to Poka-yoke his finances. I've done this for elderly family members. 

Seperate institutions for spending accounts and branch only accounts can be prudent so if there is a slippage then there is some automatic damage limitation. 

Prism

Just a thought. Are you sure that the initial text came from Natwest? You say that he was one the phone later to Natwest and received a code from them. Was he really on the phone to Natwest and did he give that code to the person on the other end? Then you said that Natwest had not logged his previous call?

Oh, and as a side note in your first post you claim to be the scammer who took the money

harz99

Prism said:

Oh, and as a side note in your first post you claim to be the scammer who took the money

The Op claims no such thing, admittedly the sentence would read better if there was a comma after the word "phone", however imho the meaning of that sentence is quite clear, especially as there is not a comma between "moment" and "as" which would have the effect of doing exactly what you alledge.  

colsten

harz99 said:

Prism said:

Oh, and as a side note in your first post you claim to be the scammer who took the money

The Op claims no such thing, admittedly the sentence would read better if there was a comma after the word "phone", however imho the meaning of that sentence is quite clear, especially as there is not a comma between "moment" and "as" which would have the effect of doing exactly what you alledge.  

He absolutely does, most probably inadvertently, claim exactly that. Any comma as you suggest would have made no difference whatsoever. What would have made a difference would be the word 'with', in between "as I am" and "the scammer".

halfamo

Scammers can also text you the code if they have already got your credentials by looking at the logged on bank account.
I have been watching JimBrowning on youtube and his channel is all about the dastardly dealings of scammers,
They use google search results to their advantage also and so searching for various legit businesses can even be risky 
I wonder if they had him log in on chrome because they take advantage of chromes page inspector to change things on a victims computer just to look like money is either gone or has been added mistakenly. They even transfer between a victims own banking  accounts as they are usually all logged into by the one person.
Anyway what Im saying is, the OP may also have inadvertently become drawn in.