My dad has been scammed out of £19,000

robatwork

Mickey666 said:

Call me a cynic as well, but is it possible the OP is planning their own scam and is using the collective experience and expertise of this forum to conduct an 'experimental' fraud to see where the weaknesses might lie and to gauge the chances of getting away with it?

I guess we'll find out if he ever comes back with some clear explanation or just disappears into the long list of "never came back" posters...

accorian

Hopefully the OP won't disappear. He's been on MSE since August 2015 and will doubtless be still following this thread.

I would also hope he appreciates the amount of concern he has stimulated:  on the face of it, his posts point to a major failure of security by Natwest, a failure of serially epic proportions in that without (1) a debit card and (2) a card reader, a (to me)  large sum of money  (£19,000) has gone from his father's current account to a scammer.

Thus ends the era of 2-factor authentication.

Or does it?

No wonder so many have concluded that this thread is the stuff of fiction: fanciful certainly, but not too well researched .As another poster said earlier, I'd love to be a member of the Natwest investigating team.

Hopefully the OP has also reported the matter to his local police; they'll most likely not embark on any investigation until Natwest has finished, but at least there'll be a crime reporting number for the OP, and the pressure on Natwest to investigate quickly and rigorously will be all the greater -- especially if whatever has truly gone on here points in one way or another to employee criminality, a state of affairs once thought unthinkable but, sadly, more worthy of consideration since the  Noel Edmonds & Others fraud. Links below to scum-of-the-earth HBOS (Reading branch) staff and fellow conspirators and the story of what happened then:

             https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49138587

             https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38842723

Yes, the OP does need to pop back here with an update as soon as he's able to.

AWOL84

Mickey666 said:

Dr_Crypto said:

That is a very clear post, Colsten, and may well be what happened. 
However, the issue about the card does seem to be difficult to reconcile. Even if the scammers had obtained a replacement card then wouldn't the father's original card have stopped working? Had he been using his card or had it stopped working? 

Call me a cynic but the OP's reluctance to discuss anything about the original payee is ringing alarm bells. 

Call me a cynic as well, but is it possible the OP is planning their own scam and is using the collective experience and expertise of this forum to conduct an 'experimental' fraud to see where the weaknesses might lie and to gauge the chances of getting away with it?

Give me strength.

AWOL84

The original payee was someone my dad paid money to to transfer an old vinyl record onto disk.

I came on here for advice (which some thankfully provided). To the rest of you who are sitting there coming up with outlandish theories I can only roll my eyes.

Bank have promised to have let us know by tomorrow and I’ll provide the update then. 

bradders1983

Hmm. Has that person had their personal account compromised as well?

colsten

AWOL84 said:

The original payee was someone my dad paid money to to transfer an old vinyl record onto disk.

I came on here for advice (which some thankfully provided). To the rest of you who are sitting there coming up with outlandish theories I can only roll my eyes.

Bank have promised to have let us know by tomorrow and I’ll provide the update then. 

Still no information on where the debit card is.

phillw

TrickyDicky101 said:

That was a very good explanation colsten.
However, I have the NatWest app on my iPhone and I can definitively set up a new payee without a card reader (as I don't have one although have had one in the past).  

The natwest app can itself act as a card reader, they assume that you are more likely to know where your phone is than your debit card (nobody takes their debit card out every five minutes to look at it).
I think you need access to the sim with the phone number they have on file before you can install the app.
Changing the phone number is possible online, but I think it texts the old number first and it takes a couple of days before they trust the new number.
Scammers have managed to get hold of replacement sims without id, but your old sim would stop working. Most people would notice, but maybe not all.

colsten

phillw said:

TrickyDicky101 said:

That was a very good explanation colsten.
However, I have the NatWest app on my iPhone and I can definitively set up a new payee without a card reader (as I don't have one although have had one in the past).  

The natwest app can itself act as a card reader

Not for authorising £19k to a new recipient, it can't

AWOL84

colsten said:

AWOL84 said:

The original payee was someone my dad paid money to to transfer an old vinyl record onto disk.

I came on here for advice (which some thankfully provided). To the rest of you who are sitting there coming up with outlandish theories I can only roll my eyes.

Bank have promised to have let us know by tomorrow and I’ll provide the update then. 

Still no information on where the debit card is.

With my dad 

callum9999

robatwork said:

Mickey666 said:

Call me a cynic as well, but is it possible the OP is planning their own scam and is using the collective experience and expertise of this forum to conduct an 'experimental' fraud to see where the weaknesses might lie and to gauge the chances of getting away with it?

I guess we'll find out if he ever comes back with some clear explanation or just disappears into the long list of "never came back" posters...

Given they've been subjected to a bunch of strangers banging on about how they're a liar, gathering research for their own scam, their dads an idiot who doesn't deserve help getting the money back and they're a school kid on half term, I'm amazed they're replying at all... There's no way in hell I'd come back and give an explanation after being treated like that! (Though I've made no secret of the fact I absolutely despise the toxic atmosphere that's been created on this board over the last few years)