Forex Scam

jmehall

Hello! My mother was scammed by what I'd guess was an online confidence trickster back in 2017/18. From what I understand, she transferred a large sum of money to an 'investor' in Hong Kong. I'm unsure if this was an individual or larger group. The scam focused around training you to make loads of money from forex trading, until you're confident enough to deposit a large amount of money into a scam exchange. The reason I'm bringing this up now is, I heard a similar story from somebody on LBC's legal hour a few weeks back. The legal expert mentioned that some banks are signed up to schemes that enable you to potentially recover your losses. I believe the funds were transferred from a Barclays current account.

As with most people who have been scammed in this way, there is of course a sense of embarrassment and denial. So I thought I'd see if anyone could firstly offer advice or experience on how to approach the bank, if there is even any point? and if so, secondly, how to try and convince the victim to engage in trying to recover the funds through a legitimate process?

Any advice is certainly welcome

eskbanker

jmehall said:

The reason I'm bringing this up now is, I heard a similar story from somebody on LBC's legal hour a few weeks back. The legal expert mentioned that some banks are signed up to schemes that enable you to potentially recover your losses.

The good news is that most major banks have indeed signed up to a voluntary code via which to reimburse qualifying victims of authorised push payment (APP) scams.

The bad news is that it was introduced in 2019 and isn't applied retrospectively, so can't be used to reclaim funds transferred in 2017/8....

In terms of approaching the bank, she'd need to make a case that they failed to apply reasonable security measures at the time, i.e. what should they have done to prevent this, in terms of their regulatory obligations - not impossible but difficult to prove, especially with the passage of time and if there is still an element of denial involved.

She could report those involved to Action Fraud but realistically I suspect it's unlikely that it would actually go anywhere....

masonic

If it is any consolation, the vast majority of people who take up this sort of trading lose large sums of money using legitimate trading platforms too.

jmehall

masonic said:

If it is any consolation, the vast majority of people who take up this sort of trading lose large sums of money using legitimate trading platforms too.

Haha very true!