Fraud Marker Placed by Barclays over Legitimate Utility Bill – Need Advice on ChallengingPosting on

agardencity

Posting on behalf of my partner, who’s now facing serious consequences due to a CIFAS fraud marker placed by Barclays Bank.

He is currently in the UK on a Global Talent Arts Visa, and opened a bank account with Barclays in February. Ten days later, the account was closed. Despite repeated attempts to find out why, the only explanation given by a staff member was, "it’s probably just because you’re new to the country."

We thought it was a temporary issue and decided to wait. In the meantime, my partner applied for Arts Council funding — and was told his application was ineligible due to possible fraud markers. This was the first we had heard of any such thing.

We visited Barclays again, and they denied placing a marker. However, after requesting a CIFAS report, we found that Barclays had in fact filed the marker, claiming a “fraudulent document” — specifically, a utility bill from Octopus Energy.

This bill was manually generated by Octopus because my partner was added to our account and our address between billing dates. We have the email chain and a subsequent letter from Octopus Energy confirming the document was genuine.

Despite submitting this evidence — including 21 supporting documents confirming his legitimate residency at a family-owned property — Barclays refused to remove the marker. Their final response came yesterday: they will not admit wrongdoing or accept the documentation as sufficient, even though the provider confirmed its legitimacy.

We are now escalating the case through:

• CIFAS (challenging the marker)

• Financial Ombudsman Service

• ICO (data handling concerns)

• And we are also considering contacting the media, although it seems Barclays generally just loves bad press

Has anyone here had success challenging a CIFAS marker or getting a bank to reverse one? We’d really appreciate any advice or guidance on how to get the bank to take responsibility. The process so far has been extremely frustrating, slow, and seems deeply flawed. It seems like there is absolutely no accountability for Barclay's incompetency and wrongdoing. 

Thanks in advance for any help.

MyRealNameToo

agardencity said:

Posting on behalf of my partner, who’s now facing serious consequences due to a CIFAS fraud marker placed by Barclays Bank.

He is currently in the UK on a Global Talent Arts Visa, and opened a bank account with Barclays in February. Ten days later, the account was closed. Despite repeated attempts to find out why, the only explanation given by a staff member was, "it’s probably just because you’re new to the country."

We thought it was a temporary issue and decided to wait. In the meantime, my partner applied for Arts Council funding — and was told his application was ineligible due to possible fraud markers. This was the first we had heard of any such thing.

We visited Barclays again, and they denied placing a marker. However, after requesting a CIFAS report, we found that Barclays had in fact filed the marker, claiming a “fraudulent document” — specifically, a utility bill from Octopus Energy.

This bill was manually generated by Octopus because my partner was added to our account and our address between billing dates. We have the email chain and a subsequent letter from Octopus Energy confirming the document was genuine.

Despite submitting this evidence — including 21 supporting documents confirming his legitimate residency at a family-owned property — Barclays refused to remove the marker. Their final response came yesterday: they will not admit wrongdoing or accept the documentation as sufficient, even though the provider confirmed its legitimacy.

We are now escalating the case through:

• CIFAS (challenging the marker)

• Financial Ombudsman Service

• ICO (data handling concerns)

• And we are also considering contacting the media, although it seems Barclays generally just loves bad press

Has anyone here had success challenging a CIFAS marker or getting a bank to reverse one? We’d really appreciate any advice or guidance on how to get the bank to take responsibility. The process so far has been extremely frustrating, slow, and seems deeply flawed. It seems like there is absolutely no accountability for Barclay's incompetency and wrongdoing. 

Thanks in advance for any help.

You can search the Ombudsman's website for prior decisions, if you search for "CIFAS" and tick banking you'll see there are a lot of cases, some upheld and some not (circa 450 upheld and 1,100 not). 

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN6367416.pdf is one such example where the ombudsman overturned though in this case its predominately because Tesco couldn't provide the evidence despite the rules requiring them to retain it for 6 years. 

eskbanker

agardencity said:

We visited Barclays again, and they denied placing a marker. However, after requesting a CIFAS report, we found that Barclays had in fact filed the marker, claiming a “fraudulent document” — specifically, a utility bill from Octopus Energy.

This bill was manually generated by Octopus because my partner was added to our account and our address between billing dates. We have the email chain and a subsequent letter from Octopus Energy confirming the document was genuine.

Just to clarify, when you say your partner was added to your account between billing dates, did the manually generated document create the impression that partner was resident and on the account before he actually was?

MyRealNameToo

eskbanker said:

agardencity said:

We visited Barclays again, and they denied placing a marker. However, after requesting a CIFAS report, we found that Barclays had in fact filed the marker, claiming a “fraudulent document” — specifically, a utility bill from Octopus Energy.

This bill was manually generated by Octopus because my partner was added to our account and our address between billing dates. We have the email chain and a subsequent letter from Octopus Energy confirming the document was genuine.

Just to clarify, when you say your partner was added to your account between billing dates, did the manually generated document create the impression that partner was resident and on the account before he actually was?

With our now defunct energy provider and indeed our council you could add a name to the bill and all prior bills would then display that name (they're clearly generated on the fly). Wife and I moved in at the same time but her name was only added later (was named on the deeds from the get go) but now appears as if she was always on the bill. 

On the basis it was a manually created bill/statement it presumably had a recent production date; it would be a fairly big assumption that just because someone is named on a bill and that bill covers a period of time that it must mean they were on the bill for the full time... I'd argue it only means they were named on the bill on the date it states it was generated. 

Suspect the "manually generated" bill varies slightly in look from the normal ones. When my Ex was in counter fraud they had examples of each main insurance companies letters on file, including paper copies so if a dodgy proof of NCD was submitted they could compare if it was on the same paper, same layout etc as we knew that firm used. 

eskbanker

Yes, just trying to tease out why Barclays might assert that it's a “fraudulent document” - OP refers to Octopus confirming its 'legitimacy' and that it's 'genuine' but presume that Barclays aren't saying it's a forgery and wonder if they're challenging its content?