Victim of romance fraud

kaMelo

Having re-read the OP, .I somehow missed this bit regarding transfers from compromised accounts, amounting to over £100,000 passing through the account and onto other accounts?

With that information frankly I'd consider any outcome that doesn't result in the account closed. a CIFAS marker and police investigation (in any combination) as a very positive outcome.
There have been many posts on here who have had that happen to them for much much less.

General_Grant

Cardriver45 said:

born_again said:

A question. In your Op you mention that your mother had " told them that she had met the suspect". That tends not to fall in the romance scams. As they like to operate without any personal risk. Which could explain why they did not go into full on romance scam questions.

The bank asked how she knew him. She didn't say she had met in person. She just said that they knew each other as they had both lost their partners as far as she can remember what she said.

. 

Your OP included "They asked her about it and she told them that she had met the suspect and that they both had lost their partners".

Cardriver45

kaMelo said:

Having re-read the OP, .I somehow missed this bit regarding transfers from compromised accounts, amounting to over £100,000 passing through the account and onto other accounts?

With that information frankly I'd consider any outcome that doesn't result in the account closed. a CIFAS marker and police investigation (in any combination) as a very positive outcome.
There have been many posts on here who have had that happen to them for much much less.

Yes, the police did investigate and came round and said they were investigating. When I spoke to the investigating officer he said that after the visiting officer's report they could clearly see that it was a romance fraud so were no longer investigating my mother. The other accounts were people who were also being romanced scammed the same as my mother.

Do you feel it is worth complaining to the bank still or is it better to just cut our losses 

colsten

General_Grant said:

Cardriver45 said:

born_again said:

A question. In your Op you mention that your mother had " told them that she had met the suspect". That tends not to fall in the romance scams. As they like to operate without any personal risk. Which could explain why they did not go into full on romance scam questions.

The bank asked how she knew him. She didn't say she had met in person. She just said that they knew each other as they had both lost their partners as far as she can remember what she said.

. 

Your OP included "They asked her about it and she told them that she had met the suspect and that they both had lost their partners".

Met on a dating site?

Cardriver45

colsten said:

General_Grant said:

Cardriver45 said:

born_again said:

A question. In your Op you mention that your mother had " told them that she had met the suspect". That tends not to fall in the romance scams. As they like to operate without any personal risk. Which could explain why they did not go into full on romance scam questions.

The bank asked how she knew him. She didn't say she had met in person. She just said that they knew each other as they had both lost their partners as far as she can remember what she said.

. 

Your OP included "They asked her about it and she told them that she had met the suspect and that they both had lost their partners".

Met on a dating site?

Yes, I just meant met online in the original post, I didn't make that clear. My Mum said that as far as she can remember the bank just asked how they knew each other and she said that they knew each other as they had both lost their partners.

colsten

Cardriver45 said:

Also as a widow with 3 disabled sons and who was left with a large amount of debt when my father passed away

An elderly (I suppose?) lady who until recently had a large amount of debt, now suddenly receiving around £100k, most of which she then uses to buy cryptocurrency should certainly set off all the AML and fraud bells in a bank. If your mum could talk herself out of this, she must have a very confident and convincing personality, which wouldn't very easily fit with the image of an emotionally vulnerable person. 

Cardriver45

colsten said:

Cardriver45 said:

Also as a widow with 3 disabled sons and who was left with a large amount of debt when my father passed away

An elderly (I suppose?) lady who until recently had a large amount of debt, now suddenly receiving around £100k, most of which she then uses to buy cryptocurrency should certainly set off all the AML and fraud bells in a bank. If your mum could talk herself out of this, she must have a very confident and convincing personality, which wouldn't very easily fit with the image of an emotionally vulnerable person. 

She has all the WhatsApp messages of the conversations which we sent screenshots of to her bank. They have unfrozen her account as well.

This comes across as a little insulting and judgemental actually as my Mum is devastated by all this and still really affected by it.

She still has an even larger amount of debt now. There's even messages of him sending the codes for the cryptocurrency

Plus it certainly didn't set off any alarm bells in her bank as they continued to allow her to do it

eskbanker

I'd suggest that it would make sense for her to submit a Subject Access Request to the bank at the earliest opportunity, seeking copies of the relevant call recordings and all other disclosable data relating to their handling of this.  Chances are they won't be able to share some of the more sensitive data that may be covered under crime investigation exemptions, but once you've had a chance to trawl through the records, it should assist with determining if they've fallen short....

Cardriver45

eskbanker said:

I'd suggest that it would make sense for her to submit a Subject Access Request to the bank at the earliest opportunity, seeking copies of the relevant call recordings and all other disclosable data relating to their handling of this.  Chances are they won't be able to share some of the more sensitive data that may be covered under crime investigation exemptions, but once you've had a chance to trawl through the records, it should assist with determining if they've fallen short....

Would I just want the phone recordings and disclosable data from when her card was stopped and accounts frozen and she spoke to the fraud department or do I need to ask for everything from when the first transactions started when she initially started being scammed?

Cardriver45

Also, she didn't just suddenly receive a massive amount of money in one go. This was smaller amounts of usually £5-10k over about 8 months from what the suspect claimed were his friends lending him money to pay for repairs to the property he was selling. He would even give regular updates on how it was going. It all eventually mounted up to that amount. So why was the bank allowing my mother to receive these amounts and then buy cryptocurrency over such a long period and not suspect something suspicious was going on?