Bank Fraud

Scoutcop

Is anyone able to give advice on how to proceed with the bank, on a fraud which occurred on my father’s bank account?

A couple of months ago, a tradesman came to my father’s doorstep to offer to do some work on his property. My father agreed to the work and the amount, and the work was undertaken and paid for by chip & pin on the door step.

After the initial transaction, a further 10 transactions, (totaling thousands), has been taken from my father’s bank account by the same tradesman. We reported this fraud to the bank, but the bank has responded to say that they cannot help us, as all the transactions were chip & pin, so the bank cannot question the transactions.

My father is adamant he did chip & pin for one transaction, and has only the one receipt for that transaction. My father still had his bank card and once the transactions were known, we had the card cancelled.

Please note, we did inform the Police but unfortunately the Police said we had to deal with the bank as they couldn’t help. Have also tried contacting the tradesman directly, on numerous occasions, but no luck.

If anyone can give some advice, on what we should do next, it will be greatly appreciated.

eskbanker

If your father is sure that he only authorised one transaction but that the merchant took multiple payments based on that single authorisation, then the bank is indeed responsible to reimburse them, and is obliged to demonstrate that he did authorise them, rather than the onus being on him to prove that he didn't.

Were they all the same value, and over what period of time?

If the bank continues to refuse, then the next step is a formal complaint, via the procedure published on their website, and if that doesn't sort it out then it would be time to escalate to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Keep_pedalling

It would have been quite possible for this “tradesman” to clone the card and watch your father put his PIN number in.

sausage_time

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81916094#Comment_81916094

That's extremely unlikely. There are no reported issues of chip cards having been cloned.

Nasqueron

You might need to ask again if he's being honest or embarrassed and not wanting to admit he was conned. If he was pressured by the person to make multiple payments for example, that is a crime and the bank and police should be more understanding if the tradesman has conned/threatened a vulnerable person.

If he paid each transaction by chip and pin, unless they noted the number and stole the card, it's extremely unlikely that a tradesman would have the sort of tech needed to clone a card, as sausage_time says, it's not something that happens (akin to the mythical criminal walking down tube carriages using a card reader to take payments) as there are far easier and less risky ways to steal

DE_612183

my guess is the trader may have used the excuse "it didn't work first time" to get the multiple transactions

born_again

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81916094#Comment_81916094

Banks system would not show as chip & pin on a cloned card, as it would only read mag stripe.

@Scoutcop What was the timescale of the transactions. bank will have the exact times?