My dad has been scammed out of £19,000

AWOL84

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth said:

AWOL84 said:

Apologies for the late response, had a million and one things on.
Right so the bank got in touch with us on Wednesday via email. I'm absolutely staggered that given my elderly father has just lost £19,000 they didn't have the decency to call rather than send a nameless e-mail providing their update.
The email said that they'd investigated "thoroughly" and because my dad had updated details via the use of a card reader that they'd been unable to refund.
By this point my head was just about to explode with rage/anger so I called Natwest to tell them once again that a card reader HAD NOT BEEN USED. I told them surely they have the capabilities to check if a card reader had been used? He said they do have the capabilities. They said they'd raise an appeal for us and we'd hear in five days.
After this I decided to try and find payee that my dad had paid back in November whose details Natwest told us had been updated. Dad could only remember part of his companys name and after a solid two hour spell of checking Google I managed to find the company and speak to the man in question.
To my utter amazement the man said he'd received the £19,000 and was only made aware after his own bank called to say whether he was expecting the payment. The bank informed him they'd withold the funds and then speak to the senders bank.
So much for Natwests "thorough" investigation eh? I called them back to provide the update and after spending nearly two hours on hold finally spoke to someone who wasn't helpful at all. I asked why wasn't we notifed about this? I asked could they call the payees bank to confirm the funds are being held and he said they could not.
The following day I called Natwest back again and again spent close to two hours on hold before speaking to someone which led to me being directed to about four different departments until I actually spoke to someone competent. He informed me that on their system he can Natwest had raised this with the payees bank a few days previous which left me further enraged as to why no one had told us this before?
All in all it seems to be a happy ending as it would appear the funds will be coming back to my dad although Natwest still haven't confirmed. They're saying they've contacted the other bank and they have upto 30 days to respond (quite why it takes this long I do not know).
The service received from Natwest has been the worst I've ever experienced with any company in my entire life and as soon as this is resolved we will be moving my dads bank account.
I'm angry with myself for not trying to find the payees details sooner as it would have saved a lot of stress.
I did ask Natwest the question as to what the scammers hoped to achieve by sending it to a payee already setup and they informed me that it's quite common that funds are sent in this way and the scammers would find the payees details to then contact them to say money has been sent in error can you wire it back to this account etc.

So from this, it appears that your father did indeed send funds to a known payee? Then it would not need a card reader to authorise. Only by luck on finding the previous payee, that your father had set up, are you able to locate the missing £19,000. Hopefully this will be returned to his account.

This begs the question, I have said previously that your father had paid a known payee!
This suggest to me now, that you father is not able to carryout his normal banking and would require some other person to do it for them? This should resolve the issues in the future.

I am afraid, your father was not scammed?

As for OP, I would get some power of attorney to run your father's money affairs.

I said way back on the thread that the bloke he paid was someone legitimate back in November of last year. He doesn't know him but paid him to transfer a vinyl record over onto CD for him.

The scammer sent them the funds to clearly try and obtain back from him after.

colsten

AWOL84 said:

As for your second point, for about the 1.5m time on this thread A CARD READER WAS NOT USED. As we now know the funds were sent to the original payee which would explain why a card reader wasn't used. The message from Natwest to say that the payees details had been updated was the scammer probably trying methods to change the account? I don't know and at this stage don't care either.
This is why I'm doubly angry with Natwest as they're clearly done no investigations whatsoever.

It doesn't matter how many million times you say the card reader wasn't used. Natwest won't allow you to change a payee in online banking without a card reader, and you told us they told you a card reader was used (although I would agree that it is poss to send £19k to an existing payee w/o using a card reader. Only Natwest can tell for certain whether the card reader was also used for the actual payment).

Your claim that Natwest have done no investigations whatsoever seems a bit far fetched. Your own report says they have. It's not to your satisfaction, but that's a different matter.

colsten

AWOL84 said:

I said way back on the thread that the bloke he paid was someone legitimate back in November of last year. He doesn't know him but paid him to transfer a vinyl record over onto CD for him.

The scammer sent them the funds to clearly try and obtain back from him after.

It appears there's a good chance the Vinyl Records person knows the scammer. At a minimum, the scammer would have had access to the guy's phone directory, as how else would they have been able to call your father. If your dad is not the one who used the card reader, then the guy also had other information, such as that your father banks with Natwest, that he has a lot of money in his account, and also had his card and his PIN.

I'd still love to be part of the Natwest team investigating this, as they have crucial facts that none of us can know.

Ergates

It's possible the transfer to the existing payee wasn't the original plan, they originaly tried to change the payee details but couldn't.  Then they could have carried out the transfer anyway, planning to then track down the recipient and trick them into paying it back into a different account - or thye might simply have done it out of spite, these guys are generally quite unpleasant.

AWOL84

colsten said:

AWOL84 said:

As for your second point, for about the 1.5m time on this thread A CARD READER WAS NOT USED. As we now know the funds were sent to the original payee which would explain why a card reader wasn't used. The message from Natwest to say that the payees details had been updated was the scammer probably trying methods to change the account? I don't know and at this stage don't care either.
This is why I'm doubly angry with Natwest as they're clearly done no investigations whatsoever.

It doesn't matter how many million times you say the card reader wasn't used. Natwest won't allow you to change a payee in online banking without a card reader, and you told us they told you a card reader was used (although I would agree that it is poss to send £19k to an existing payee w/o using a card reader. Only Natwest can tell for certain whether the card reader was also used for the actual payment).

Your claim that Natwest have done no investigations whatsoever seems a bit far fetched. Your own report says they have. It's not to your satisfaction, but that's a different matter.

The card reader wasn’t used and the money was sent to an original payee which pretty much concludes they’ve done little in the way of “investigation”. It wouldn’t have taken Colombo to have worked that one out but it seems it was too much for the NatWest team to handle. 

As the guy said above it appears they transferred the money in the hope of tracking the other person down to then transfer the money back into another account, both NatWest and the payees bank said the same thing that it’s quite a common trick they use.

bradders1983

Would also question why the bloke who received the £19k didnt do anything about it off his own back, surely he would have known who sent it him?

colsten

AWOL84 said:

The card reader wasn’t used and the money was sent to an original payee which pretty much concludes they’ve done little in the way of “investigation”. It wouldn’t have taken Colombo to have worked that one out but it seems it was too much for the NatWest team to handle. 

We've gone round and round this. To recap:  It is impossible to change the payee in Natwest online banking without a card reader. You reported your dad had a text confirming a change of payee, and you reported that Natwest confirmed that the card reader was used (though you did not report what Natwest said the card reader was used for). 

None of this means that the card reader was used to pay the £19k. As there are no text msgs for confirming a payment with the card reader, the card reader may or may not have been used for the actual payment. Natwest will know whether it was or not.

I am afraid, there are still many unanswered questions.

AWOL84 said:

As the guy said above it appears they transferred the money in the hope of tracking the other person down to then transfer the money back into another account, both NatWest and the payees bank said the same thing that it’s quite a common trick they use.

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why would a random scammer

1. have your father's telephone number
2. know the contact details of someone your father paid a year ago

Plus, why would your father pay £19k to someone he paid a year ago, even though he does not owe that payee a penny?

bradders1983 said:

Would also question why the bloke who received the £19k didnt do anything about it off his own back, surely he would have known who sent it him?

Exactly. You would expect that he noticed £19k that unexpectedly arrived in his account, and would at least have discussed it with his bank / requested that the money would be sent back to where it came from.

The whole think stinks.

[Deleted User]

If you have read every post on this it makes total sense and sounds like the OP stopped the scam in the nick of time - the scammer hadn't actually reached the point of extracting money yet and that's why most of the commenters above are confused.

1. OP said he was alerted that his Dad was taking a call from somebody "trying to stop money from leaving his account" - the classic "move to safe account" scam from someone pretending to be a bank employee.
   
   
2. In order to the convince the victim that money was leaving without his permission, the scammer connected via TeamViewer made a transfer to a known payee as that was the easiest way without any verification or action from the victim (the OP's dad didn't make the £19k transfer). This would add urgency and emotion to the situation to get the victim to do whatever was asked as the victim could now see £19k was missing from his bank.**
   
   
3. The next step never happened but the plan would be to ask the victim to transfer the rest of his money to a "safe account(s)" to prevent any more going missing. That was the point the OP got the phone call from his mother and asked for the computer / internet to be disconnected so this step of the scam never went ahead. But this was the step that would have sent the rest of the money to the scammers account(s) [and the step that would have required card reader etc] EDIT: probably ask the victim to go into branch and make one big transfer eg £100k
    
4. Bloke that was sent the £19k was just an innocent party used randomly in the scam. It so happened that he never received it, his bank withheld the money so he knew nothing about where it came from or what was happening.
   
   

Why I think people might be missing this point is that I assume there was a lot more than £19k in that account and using the £19k transfer was just bait to convince the victim that money was going missing and possibly a test of the transfer limit.

There was potentially a lot more to be gained from the subsequent moving to safe accounts and far easier to convince somebody who has just seen £19k go missing in front of them.


** for clarity about step 2, the scammer doesn't let the victim know that he can control his computer with Teamviewer or even see the screen. This adds legitimacy when the pretend bank employee says things that only the bank would know - eg balance of the account etc. The scammer will blank the screen of the victim with some technical excuse or send them away from the screen to "check the lights on their router" and whist this happens will make the transfer to a random payee. When the victim gets back the pretend banker says they can see somebody stealing the money and of course now the victim can see that on-screen as well.

Prism

[Deleted User] said:

If you have read every post on this it makes total sense and sounds like the OP stopped the scam in the nick of time - the scammer hadn't actually reached the point of extracting money yet and that's why most of the commenters above are confused.

1. OP said he was alerted that his Dad was taking a call from somebody "trying to stop money from leaving his account" - the classic "move to safe account" scam from someone pretending to be a bank employee.
   
   
2. In order to the convince the victim that money was leaving without his permission, the scammer connected via TeamViewer made a transfer to a known payee as that was the easiest way without any verification or action from the victim (the OP's dad didn't make the £19k transfer). This would add urgency and emotion to the situation to get the victim to do whatever was asked as the victim could now see £19k was missing from his bank.**
   
   
3. The next step never happened but the plan would be to ask the victim to transfer the rest of his money to a "safe account(s)" to prevent any more going missing. That was the point the OP got the phone call from his mother and asked for the computer / internet to be disconnected so this step of the scam never went ahead. But this was the step that would have sent the rest of the money to the scammers account(s) [and the step that would have required card reader etc]
   
   
4. Bloke that was sent the £19k was just an innocent party used randomly in the scam. It so happened that he never received it, his bank withheld the money so he knew nothing about where it came from or what was happening.
   
   

Why I think people might be missing this point is that I assume there was a lot more than £19k in that account and using the £19k transfer was just bait to convince the victim that money was going missing and possibly a test of the transfer limit.

There was potentially a lot more to be gained from the subsequent moving to safe accounts and far easier to convince somebody who has just seen £19k go missing in front of them.


** for clarity about step 2, the scammer doesn't let the victim know that he can control his computer with Teamviewer or even see the screen. This adds legitimacy when the pretend bank employee says things that only the bank would know - eg balance of the account etc. The scammer will blank the screen of the victim with some technical excuse or send them away from the screen to "check the lights on their router" and whist this happens will make the transfer to a random payee. When the victim gets back the pretend banker says they can see somebody stealing the money and of course now the victim can see that on-screen as well.

I agree with all of this. I just wanted to add that the text from 'Natwest' that indicated that the payee details had been changed was also from the scammers and designed to create panic. You can make a text appear to come from any number that you want.

k12479

[Deleted User] said:

There was potentially a lot more to be gained from the subsequent moving to safe accounts and far easier to convince somebody who has just seen £19k go missing in front of them.

Natwest daily transfer limits appear to be £20k or £50k. If the former, that would leave just £1k for the scammer, if the latter the scammer would still forgo a significant chunk unnecessarily.