Frozen account

JChester

A friend went abroad on business and discovered his account had been froxen due to suspected fraud. The bank told him he could only dort this out by going in person into a branch. He is stuck abroad with no money to buy flights to come home. How can he access money to get back to this country?

ZeroSum

Credit card? 

eDicky

It sounds like your friend made a huge mistake to travel abroad with only a single source of funds. And also without a booked return flight..?

If this is truly the case he/she will need to ask a friend or family to book a flight for them.

But beware, if you have received an email to that effect, it's a well-known scam, their email account has been hacked. Contact them by phone before sending money as requested.

bradders1983

Assume its true, you could always be a mate and book a flight for him?

Grumpy_chap

JChester said:

That's not helpful

Sorry, it was not meant to be unhelpful.  Unfortunately, there were three (or four) different threads yesterday all from new forumites and all about the issues of a frozen bank account.  I linked to one of those (by username "Big Balls") which, at the start, did have some useful comments for anyone in that type of situation.

I apologise if I incorrectly tainted you.

When a bank account gets frozen, there is little that can be done until the bank run the course of their investigation.  The timescales for this investigation can be highly variable.  Triggers that cause an investigation to be initiated can also be varied.

The situation of friend stuck abroad with no funds and no flight ticket is also one that is a theme in common scams.  It makes it more difficult when the event genuinely occurs, so ask yourself:

• Is your friend the type of person to arrive in this situation?
• Would your friend not be able to use a credit card or similar?
• Are you logically the first person your friend would contact to help them in this type of situation?
• Can his employer / business acquaintances he has visited not provide support more readily than you can?
• Would your friend not have travel insurance to cover this situation and provide support as the first port of call?

If, after considering the above, you think this is likely to be a genuine request for support, then try to make contact with your friend through trusted means.  Contact methods you have for your friend from before he travelled, not some new or temporary contact method.  Also, if you can telephone and speak with your friend, that is better than e-mail (which may have been intercepted) - if you actually speak with your friend you will know the voice and can even discuss things your friend will know but a fraudster will not.  [That latter part could be a security vetting thing if you have no choice other than e-mail / text.]

If you go through the above, then it is probably more secure to actually buy your friend the things that are needed directly using your credit card and trusted websites (hotel sites / airline sites) that transferring monetary funds.  By all means, send a nominal amount for "pocket money", but if the need is for a flight and one night in a hotel, then book and pay for those direct with the end provider.  This may all seem like a hassle, but if your friendship means anything, then your friend will be very grateful for that type of help and will just want to get back home as quickly and safely as possible.

If you offer that type of qualified help and your friend declines it, then that is a fair indication that it is either not your friend you are dealing with or the friendship is not worth preserving.

I apologise again if the comment yesterday was not useful, but the timing of a troll posting the other spam threads all on such a similar subject was very inconvenient.

Good luck, and do let us know how you get on or if the forum can offer further advice.  We are a friendly bunch but sometimes we all call it wrong.

jonesMUFCforever

Just to add to the above post by Grumpy - would the businessman not have a return air ticket - does not even need a paper version these days?

born_again

jonesMUFCforever said:

Just to add to the above post by Grumpy - would the businessman not have a return air ticket - does not even need a paper version these days?

Or their company to bail them out.....