How to deal with a fraud team at my bank?

AndrewC1

Hi there,

On one beautiful Sunday about 2 months ago I woke with my phone being off. I went to a repair shop and while I was waiting for them to fix it, I decided to buy a coffee. At that moment I found out that I couldn't pay for coffee due to insufficient funds on my bank account. When I got home to my laptop, I found out via internet banking that all my funds are gone, plus an overdraft was taken by someone. Everything was transferred to someone with a real persons name, and I am not aware of that person. Fraud team of my bank got notified straight away.

A day later, I called the fraud team and found out that they tried to call me, and without speaking to me they decided to close the case.

Next day, at work, I managed to turn on the phone, which couldn't be repaired by a local repair shop a few days before. There was a message about "SECURITY THREAT: Text recognizer appears to be infected..." with two options: Ignore/Uninstall. My colleagues saw this message too, and we took a photo of my phone's screen. I was advised to uninstall that program. Fraud department at my bank got notified about it, and they reopened my case again.

Then for a number of weeks I was contacting the fraud team by calling them, and attending the local bank branch. It felt that I was speaking to some kind of receptionists of the fraud team, who were not aware of details of my case and  couldn't really share anything useful, and most of the time I got more or less the same answers that they could not find any new notes about the progress of my case.

Finally, 1.5 month later, after I decided to attended my local bank branch for another time, I found out from the manager of that branch that the case is closed again. It was  pretty shocking decision considering the following facts:

• Normally, I don’t do bank transactions at nights. My money got stolen then.
• Normally, I don’t transfer large sums of money to random people (especially, using overdrafts). 
• Normally, I don’t use overdrafts to such extent (around 2500 GBP - maybe once in 10 years).
• I have never sent money to that person/organization, who received all my money on that "lovely" Sunday.
• Local bank branch manager saw a message on my phone, which stated: “TEXT RECOGNIZER appears to be infected...."

Patterns of the way I use my money on that bank account can be easily identified as I have been with that bank for alike 10 years.

I have notified about the case the complaint team of the bank.

What are the following steps for myself? Talk to police? Financial Ombudsman? Any other suggestions?

Will appreciate any advice.

p.s. I am still waiting for some written summary of the case, and confirmation of their final decisions, as everything I currently have my bank manager's words and some phone calls to the fraud team.

eskbanker

Banks are obliged to promptly reimburse transactions that were unauthorised by the account holder, unless they have reasons to believe that the account holder was involved - if they had nothing to do with you, then that's the key thing you need to focus on, not trying to highlight variances from what you consider to be the normal pattern of your account usage.

However, it sounds like your phone was infected with something nasty, and if this directly led to your bank account being compromised, it's possible that the bank will hold you responsible for that.  Prior to all this, did you use your phone to access your account?

Wait and see what they put into writing - if the complaint isn't resolved to your satisfaction then escalation to the FOS would be the next step....

HeinzVarieties

New poster...

Very well written tales...

Couldn't give a fig about their account being locked two months ago...

Suddenly seems to have a mild interest in it...

My advice: Please don't bite.. (and for the mods a healthy middle finger you insufferable..)

AndrewC1

eskbanker said:

Banks are obliged to promptly reimburse transactions that were unauthorised by the account holder, unless they have reasons to believe that the account holder was involved - if they had nothing to do with you, then that's the key thing you need to focus on, not trying to highlight variances from what you consider to be the normal pattern of your account usage.

However, it sounds like your phone was infected with something nasty, and if this directly led to your bank account being compromised, it's possible that the bank will hold you responsible for that.  Prior to all this, did you use your phone to access your account?

Wait and see what they put into writing - if the complaint isn't resolved to your satisfaction then escalation to the FOS would be the next step....

Thank you very much for the reply. Could you please suggest any alternative steps apart from, or in addition to FOS?

HeinzVarieties said:

New poster...

Very well written tales...

Couldn't give a fig about their account being locked two months ago...

Suddenly seems to have a mild interest in it...

My advice: Please don't bite.. (and for the mods a healthy middle finger you insufferable..)

New poster made a post? Seems to be pretty impossible, right? Sorry, but I'm not very clear, what is the point of your reply? Am I trying to sell anything? Or what's your concern?

And I do apologies, if my post is not clear enough for you. I will summarise it - I was not allowed to use my internet bank for the duration of the fraud team's investigation. I was calling them, and attending local branch of the bank on weekly basis. As soon as I found out about their decision, I filled in a complaint form. Now I am trying to figure out my following steps. What do you mean by "mild interest" please?

kaMelo

Your steps are as laid out. Complain to your bank, if not resolved to your satisfaction escalate to the ombudsman. If they don't resolve to your satisfaction then you are free to take your bank to court.  There are no other options.