Is this a scam risk? Selling car

eskbanker

Cheslea2010 said:

Bank transfers cannot be reversed by the bank. I make hundreds everyday in my job and in the past have mistakenly sent a payment to the wrong account. The bank were powerless to stop it so we had to get the supplier to send it back.

The issue of mistakenly sending a payment to the wrong account is a different scenario from the one envisaged above, which entails an allegation of fraud.

If you send a payment to the wrong account, then yes, there's no mechanism to instruct reversal as such, but there is a defined misdirected payments process, which involves liaison between the sending and receiving banks, plus the actual recipient of the funds (who often won't be known to the sender) - if the recipient chooses not to be cooperative then it tends to be an expensive mistake, as it's typically prohibitive to enforce disclosure of their identity.

However, the scenario under discussion in this thread is the one where the sender is able to convince their bank that the recipient of the transfer was acting fraudulently, so, with that being a crime, the sending bank is effectively obliged to take steps in response, such as contacting the receiving bank and arranging for the funds to be frozen.  Again, it's not literally reversal, but it does mean that the recipient can't be 100% sure that the transfer is 'safe', in the event that the sender chooses to make malicious allegations.  It should be possible in such cases to demonstrate that it wasn't fraudulent (e.g. with a signed receipt, perhaps) but still a pain to have to resolve the matter in order to unfreeze your account....

saker75

This is marvellous, thank you.