Investment Scam Ads still on Facebook

Liathanail

@etienneg your guess is as good as mine. You can’t be more critical of her than I am. Basic investing fundamentals, if you can’t afford to lose it then you can’t afford to invest it. That’s leaving aside why anyone would fall for a Facebook ad with Piers Morgan plastered all over it as a reliable advisor on investing. She’s not at all online savvy, is mainly on Facebook for flower arranging groups and holiday photos from family that don’t live locally.

I guess like a lot of older people with limited income that are struggling she fell for the promise of a bit of extra cash. When we talked about it she said she wanted to be able to do more for her grandchildren (my sister’s kids) and to be able to leave some money as an inheritance. She did equity release on her property when she retired as she had no private pension, back when she was working there was no legal requirement for your employer to provide one. She got divorced at 37 and has never had a particularly well paid job so savings are really limited. So it’s not that she can’t pay it off, but it will wipe out a big chunk of her remaining savings.

A long winded way of saying that she believed in the triumph of hope over rational thinking.

born_again

Liathanail said:

@born_again I am well aware of what counts as fraud and what doesn’t. At no point has she claimed this was fraud. She has been very specific in saying she was scammed. Two different things.

Unfortunately, despite signing up to the scam protection scheme Capital One has no way to report when you have been scammed. The only form they have for these situations is a Fraudulent Transaction form where you are instructed to choose the ‘Other’ option and then type a description of what happened into the text box. We asked about this on the initial call where she stopped her card and we were told they hadn’t yet set up a specific form for scams. After submittIng the form, it was rejected for not meeting the criteria for a fraudulent transaction.

Incidentally, Capital One has two categories of fraudulent transactions. The first is the one you mentioned where a third party uses your card details without your authorisation. But the second is where you authorise payment to a company for goods or services which they fail to deliver, or which are not as described. So in this case it would fall under the second category as she purchased an investment account but was not provided with any way to access this account or any account details.

That scheme relates to APP scams (Banking/Faster payments) & not card payments.

With card payments. If you make the payment, it can never be treated as fraud. It can only be treated as a dispute. 👍

jaypers

Have you reported to Action Fraud? You need a case number and they can offer valuable advice (Edit….yes you have, just noted that!). 

There are devices available such as TruCall that can help massively with unsolicited phone calls, but tailored to landlines…….WhatsApp and Mobile phones are a little more difficult.

if you are in the Greater Manchester area, PM me. I’m involved in this type of stuff and have contacts within GMP who can help further. 

Johnjdc

Ironically Twitter/X is even worse at the moment. I can't remember seeing an advert this week that wasn't the classic "The Bank of England is suing this celebrity for revealing how to create free money" or whatever.

jaypers

Johnjdc said:

Ironically Twitter/X is even worse at the moment. I can't remember seeing an advert this week that wasn't the classic "The Bank of England is suing this celebrity for revealing how to create free money" or whatever.

Pretty much my starting point for anything on social media, and text/phone call/email, offering me any product or service is ‘it’s a scam’……..sad state of affairs but be suspicious of everything. 

Beddie

I hope your Mum is okay, these types of fraud can be very damaging, far beyond the monetary value. I'm sure she's learnt her lesson, but probably feels stupid, angry and has let you down.

She should watch that BBC show Scam Interceptors, to see how easy it is for people to fall for scams and not to be too hard on herself.

Liathanail

born_again said:

Liathanail said:

@born_again I am well aware of what counts as fraud and what doesn’t. At no point has she claimed this was fraud. She has been very specific in saying she was scammed. Two different things.

Unfortunately, despite signing up to the scam protection scheme Capital One has no way to report when you have been scammed. The only form they have for these situations is a Fraudulent Transaction form where you are instructed to choose the ‘Other’ option and then type a description of what happened into the text box. We asked about this on the initial call where she stopped her card and we were told they hadn’t yet set up a specific form for scams. After submittIng the form, it was rejected for not meeting the criteria for a fraudulent transaction.

Incidentally, Capital One has two categories of fraudulent transactions. The first is the one you mentioned where a third party uses your card details without your authorisation. But the second is where you authorise payment to a company for goods or services which they fail to deliver, or which are not as described. So in this case it would fall under the second category as she purchased an investment account but was not provided with any way to access this account or any account details.

That scheme relates to APP scams (Banking/Faster payments) & not card payments.

With card payments. If you make the payment, it can never be treated as fraud. It can only be treated as a dispute. 👍

Not really helpful. The fact remains that Capital One do not have any mechanism to report scams, not fraud, they only have a form to report fraud. That applies whether it is an APP scam or any other type of scam so they are not really taking their obligations to support their customers seriously in either case.

Capital One’s own page on scams states that in some cases non APP related scams may also be covered, it specifically mentions that payments made using your credit card may be covered in some circumstances where the organisation receiving the payment has misrepresented itself.

But then none of this matters if they don’t respond to emails and their customer service line refuses to discuss it.

born_again

Liathanail said:

born_again said:

Liathanail said:

@born_again I am well aware of what counts as fraud and what doesn’t. At no point has she claimed this was fraud. She has been very specific in saying she was scammed. Two different things.

Unfortunately, despite signing up to the scam protection scheme Capital One has no way to report when you have been scammed. The only form they have for these situations is a Fraudulent Transaction form where you are instructed to choose the ‘Other’ option and then type a description of what happened into the text box. We asked about this on the initial call where she stopped her card and we were told they hadn’t yet set up a specific form for scams. After submittIng the form, it was rejected for not meeting the criteria for a fraudulent transaction.

Incidentally, Capital One has two categories of fraudulent transactions. The first is the one you mentioned where a third party uses your card details without your authorisation. But the second is where you authorise payment to a company for goods or services which they fail to deliver, or which are not as described. So in this case it would fall under the second category as she purchased an investment account but was not provided with any way to access this account or any account details.

That scheme relates to APP scams (Banking/Faster payments) & not card payments.

With card payments. If you make the payment, it can never be treated as fraud. It can only be treated as a dispute. 👍

Not really helpful. The fact remains that Capital One do not have any mechanism to report scams, not fraud, they only have a form to report fraud. That applies whether it is an APP scam or any other type of scam so they are not really taking their obligations to support their customers seriously in either case.

Capital One’s own page on scams states that in some cases non APP related scams may also be covered, it specifically mentions that payments made using your credit card may be covered in some circumstances where the organisation receiving the payment has misrepresented itself.

But then none of this matters if they don’t respond to emails and their customer service line refuses to discuss it.

Sorry it was not helpful, just pointing out how banks deal with these cases. 

Where a retailer has misrepresented itself. Then it is a dispute under card regulations. It can not be treated as fraud, as then the retailer simply has a out of providing customer details. As they already have done.

Banks are not there to report scams. They are not the police. 
That is down to yourself to take forwards. Only ever had one facebook report, where they shut the page down out of a lot. 

I get that you have not received account details. Bank can not help you get them, although if retailer supplied them to the back as a reason this is not fraud. Ask bank to provide a copy of that. Which they really should have done anyway.
Who at a guess will not be Uk based. As none of these ever are.

Liathanail

@born_again I think you are misunderstanding the issue. My mother clicked on an ad for an investment company on Facebook. Not a retailer. This is a known issue and in fact something that Martin Lewis campaigned about several years ago that Facebook are not vetting these scammers and allowing them to place ads featuring people like Piers Morgan, Deborah Meaden and Martin himself. None of these are genuine companies.

She was contacted via WhatsApp by someone claiming to be from that investment company who told her he would set up an account on their investment platform for her. She was instructed to send a photo of her ID (passport or drivers license) via WhatsApp to verify her identity. He then sent her a link to the App Store to download and install AnyDesk remote desktop app so that he could see everything that she did on her phone and iPad. She had no idea what this was and he told her it was part of setting up her investment account. The software was recording and sending back details of everything she did on her phone. No legitimate investment company would do that. 

In order to open her investment account she was instructed to make a payment of £200 which she did with his help whilst he had access to her phone and her Capital One app. Because clearly this investment account never existed, she never received any account information or any details on how to access her investment account. The payment went to an account in Istanbul.

The following day she was contacted again to upgrade her account to an AI trading based version which would provide better returns, she made a second payment of a further £200. The person she spoke to promptly deleted his WhatsApp account which is when my mother figured out that she had been scammed.

For me, both payments should have been flagged as suspicious and blocked by Capital One. This  is very much an unusual transaction in both cases for a pensioner to suddenly be making 2 payments of £200 to a random account in Istanbul when she usually barely uses her card except to buy the occasional present for her grandchildren on Amazon or Argos.

Having provided all of this information to Capital One then at the very least she should have a claim under Section 75 as the company that the payment went to is not an investment company, is not powered-affinity as they claimed and has not provided her with an investment account which is what she thought she was purchasing.

i have already reported to ActionFraud. But that doesn’t change the fact that my mother is now being expected to pay £400 on her credit card and Capital One are refusing to accept that a) they should never have authorised these suspicious transactions in the first place and b) she did not receive the goods or services that she paid for.

if they would even respond to emails or phone calls that would be something but they are not even doing that.

masonic

Who is the merchant who took the card payment?

Have Capital One explained why they aren't willing to initiate a S75 claim?

Suspect S75 will fail because the merchant would have provided the goods or services to whomever your mother actually purchased them for (while thinking she was setting up an investment account).

Capital One would have taken reasonable steps to get two factor authorisation of the transactions using the app, which is where the remote access came in.