New bank account

prings17 · 3 August at 7:12AM

Hi, my son is now 21 and is in need of his own bank account for his new employment. Unfortunately when he left school at 16 and got his first job he fell into the wrong crowd and got persuaded to let money run through his then bank account from other accounts. As a result of this his bank cancelled his account and he has been unable to open a bank account ever since. He's grown up massively now and accepts that he's made a mistake, now he needs his own bank account for his new employment - can anyone advise us on who we can contact next as all the main banks don't want to know.

TimSynths · 3 August at 8:07AM

prings17 said:

Hi, my son is now 21 and is in need of his own bank account for his new employment. Unfortunately when he left school at 16 and got his first job he fell into the wrong crowd and got persuaded to let money run through his then bank account from other accounts. As a result of this his bank cancelled his account and he has been unable to open a bank account ever since. He's grown up massively now and accepts that he's made a mistake, now he needs his own bank account for his new employment - can anyone advise us on who we can contact next as all the main banks don't want to know.

So he will in all likelihood have a CIFAS warning against him for "misuse of facility" ie he was a money mule. This will last for six years and there is nothing he can do about it, its a fact he did it. Only light at the end of the tunnel is the six years will soon be up. Until then I don't think any bank will touch him with a barge pole as you have probably already found out.

Now I'm not 100% sure about this bit but there might be some sort of "pre pay" accounts out there that might take a salary payment but I'm completely off piste with this I'm afraid.

eskbanker · 3 August at 12:17PM

As above, there will be a marker recorded against him at CIFAS, the database used by the industry to record fraudulent activity - he can submit a subject access request to them to ascertain exactly when it was placed so that the expiry date can be determined:

https://www.cifas.org.uk/dsar

If the fraud was very soon after he turned 16 and he'll be 22 shortly then the end may be in sight fairly imminently, but depending on the exact dates concerned it could be a significantly longer wait, during which he'd need to find alternative arrangements instead of a mainstream bank account....