Investment Scam Ads still on Facebook

Liathanail

masonic said:

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.

Payments were to:
S/FTGGROUP
S/E LEARNING
as per her credit card statement.

Capital One are stating:

1, No chargeback as supplier offered all services and adhered to the contract (not true, my mother believed she was buying an online investment account from powered-affinity)
2. Section 75 they do not believe there is a misrepresentation 
3. Do not constitute qualifying transactions as they are trading in binary options 
4. They state that they understand that she accepts deposits were successful and her trading account appropriately credited.

So none of their justifications are accurate. 

masonic

So it would seem the scammer holds a binary options trading account. They convinced your mother to willingly pay for some services for the scammer by deceiving her into thinking she was paying for an account for herself. So the merchant is not at fault for accepting your mother's payment and presumably did indeed provide the services to the scammer that your mother paid for. Capital One is correct on points 1-3. On point 4, the only issue was that it was not in fact her trading account. But payments by a third party may well be allowed, in which case your mother only has a claim against the person who scammed her, not the card provider or the merchant. Just like if they walked her into a shop to buy an expensive TV, supposedly for herself, then arranged to drive it home for her, never to be seen again.

born_again

Liathanail said:

@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.

I'm not misunderstanding. This is how they are referred to in banking. Retailer is the company debiting her account. Hence investment co.

So she responded to the add on Facebook which caused them to contact her. Method of contact makes no difference. Deleted again makes no difference.
Yes facebook should deal with these faster, but even AI can't catch all these adds.

Why should the transaction been flagged, as it was approved by cardholder? People complain about too intrusive banks & blocking transactions. They can not win. 
I guessing 2FA was involved here. Which also means it would not be blocked. So did your mother either enter or pass the details on?

You said that the CC had contested transaction & been advised by them of the account details. So that fulfils the chargeback process. As I said before. Get them to provide the details to you.

Sadly this was done with her approval. 

I can't see S75 working, but give it a go. 

Liathanail

Thanks @masonic that makes it a lot clearer to me what happened and how the scam works.
If both of those companies are providing binary options trading accounts then presumably they are traceable. Would there be any way for them to provide the details to Capital One regarding which account was actually credited and trace the scammer that way?

masonic

Liathanail said:

Thanks @masonic that makes it a lot clearer to me what happened and how the scam works.
If both of those companies are providing binary options trading accounts then presumably they are traceable. Would there be any way for them to provide the details to Capital One regarding which account was actually credited and trace the scammer that way?

It would be a matter for the police to investigate, but they don't have the resources and likely wouldn't get very far with companies based in Turkey. Scammers like this often take control of other people's accounts to receive the money and forward on until it becomes untraceable and certainly cannot be linked back to them. The money won't be recoverable unfortunately, and while it is little solace, we see instances where far more gets taken before the victim realises what has happened.