My dad has been scammed out of £19,000

eskbanker

Sobeboy15 said:
My advice to you is to report this to the police and they have some kind of online fraud department they will put you in touch with. 

Unfortunately, the department concerned, Action Fraud, doesn't investigate cases as such, it's just a mechanism for collating data and issuing generic warnings, as per https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/what-is-action-fraud

We provide a central point of contact for information about fraud and financially motivated internet crime. People are scammed, ripped off or conned everyday and we want this to stop.

[...]

When you report to us you will receive a police crime reference number. Reports taken are passed to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau. Action Fraud does not investigate the cases and cannot advise you on the progress of a case.

Teapot55

Two questions:

Why do people keep huge amounts of money in their current accounts? If you’ve got large amounts from pension lump sums or whatever, aren’t they safer in a deposit account with the same bank for now, even if the interest rate on them is rubbish?

Why have texts enabled on your internet banking and then ignore or be unaware of text messages? 

Ergates

Teapot55 said:

Why have texts enabled on your internet banking and then ignore or be unaware of text messages? 

a) You don't have your phone on you - not everyone carries their phone around all day.
b) You hear the ping, but don't look at it immediately because you're in the middle of something and a text can wait
c) You're on the phone to someone who you believe is working at your bank and they tell you you're about to get a text and not to worry about it

colsten

Teapot55 said:

Two questions:

Why do people keep huge amounts of money in their current accounts? If you’ve got large amounts from pension lump sums or whatever, aren’t they safer in a deposit account with the same bank for now, even if the interest rate on them is rubbish?

Keeping money in a savings account with online access, which almost all of them have these days, wouldn't stop a scammer. As the savings account is shown online, it would just be a tiny extra step to transfer money from the savings account into the current account. Anyone susceptible to fall for the scammers in the first instance would almost certainly not hesitate to make such a transfer. Or the spammers can do it themselves once they have access to the victim's online banking, which they will have once they managed to plant TeamViewer on the victim's device.

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.

whitesmith

But who was the original payee? Friend / family / business / savings...???

sheramber

If they only changed the sort code as stated it is quite a coincidence that the account number for the new sort code was the same as the account number already held for the original sort code.

colsten

sheramber said:

If they only changed the sort code as stated it is quite a coincidence that the account number for the new sort code was the same as the account number already held for the original sort code.

As has been said multiple times now, in Natwest online banking it is not possible to change the sort code or the account number of an existing payee.

What can be changed is the Reference, which in some cases (e.g. NS&I, RCI, some Building Societies and Credit Unions) would direct the payment to a different account. Thus people have asked what the sort code of the "old" payee is / who the that "old" payee is.

k12479

colsten said:
What can be changed is the Reference, which in some cases (e.g. NS&I, RCI, some Building Societies and Credit Unions) would direct the payment to a different account.

Some of these, e.g. RCI, should only accept incoming funds from an existing linked account.

Yahoo_Mail

colsten said:

sheramber said:

If they only changed the sort code as stated it is quite a coincidence that the account number for the new sort code was the same as the account number already held for the original sort code.

As has been said multiple times now, in Natwest online banking it is not possible to change the sort code or the account number of an existing payee.

What can be changed is the Reference, which in some cases (e.g. NS&I, RCI, some Building Societies and Credit Unions) would direct the payment to a different account. Thus people have asked what the sort code of the "old" payee is / who the that "old" payee is.

Yeah, it does appear you can indeed change the reference without the card reader if you simply go to make a payment and change the reference before you send it. Which does beg the question why you need to use your card reader to "amend" a payee but can happily change it without as long as you're willing to send at least 1p?

colsten

Yahoo_Mail said:

colsten said:

sheramber said:

If they only changed the sort code as stated it is quite a coincidence that the account number for the new sort code was the same as the account number already held for the original sort code.

As has been said multiple times now, in Natwest online banking it is not possible to change the sort code or the account number of an existing payee.

What can be changed is the Reference, which in some cases (e.g. NS&I, RCI, some Building Societies and Credit Unions) would direct the payment to a different account. Thus people have asked what the sort code of the "old" payee is / who the that "old" payee is.

Yeah, it does appear you can indeed change the reference without the card reader if you simply go to make a payment and change the reference before you send it. Which does beg the question why you need to use your card reader to "amend" a payee but can happily change it without as long as you're willing to send at least 1p?

I just tried this.  1p to an account I last made a 4-figure payment to at the beginning of the month. It's the same payee I had changed the Reference for yesterday (which I had to confirm with the card reader)

1. Online: it asks me to confirm with the card reader. I didn't proceed as I don't have the card & the reader on me right now
2. App: went through fine, using yet another new Reference, but only because the amount was less than £1,000. There's no way I could have made a payment for a higher amount without using the card reader.