Loss due to invoice fraud

2

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  • agrinnall
    agrinnall Posts: 23,344
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    yes all bank payments are instant these days no matter which bank to bank transactions, even withdrawals from Paypal that used to take upto 9 days arrives in your bank within seconds.
    even cheques clear quicker now

    Mostly nonsense, if you don't understand the banking system don't pretend that you do.

    Not all bank payments are instant, some are very quick (seconds), some take a few minutes, some take a few hours, some happen overnight, and some are completed by the end of the next business day. All in accordance with the Payment Services Regulations 2009.

    Cheque clearing is no different (yet) than it has been for many years.
  • angryparcel
    angryparcel Posts: 926 Forumite
    agrinnall wrote: »
    Mostly nonsense, if you don't understand the banking system don't pretend that you do.

    Not all bank payments are instant, some are very quick (seconds), some take a few minutes, some take a few hours, some happen overnight, and some are completed by the end of the next business day. All in accordance with the Payment Services Regulations 2009.

    Cheque clearing is no different (yet) than it has been for many years.
    i have accounts with natwest, barclays and lloyds and all are instant when i make transfers from 1 to the other. cheques clear within 2 days now rather than 3 to 4 days
  • Gleeful
    Gleeful Posts: 1,979 Forumite
    As I understand it, you paid in good faith and the email came from the plumbers email account. I wouldn't even have paid the additional 3K. The plumbing company are the victim of a crime, not you. It would be for them to report it to the police.
  • agrinnall
    agrinnall Posts: 23,344
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    i have accounts with natwest, barclays and lloyds and all are instant when i make transfers from 1 to the other. cheques clear within 2 days now rather than 3 to 4 days

    Anecdotal evidence on the first part, backing up what I said about the PSRs, and just wrong on the second.

    This is what actually happens with cheque clearing

    https://www.chequeandcredit.co.uk/information-hub/faqs/2-4-6-cheque-clearing-timescales

    However, one day clearing is scheduled to start in October.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39351793
  • cheques clear within 2 days now rather than 3 to 4 days

    Your bank may well allow you access to the funds from the cheque after 2 days but this doesn't mean that the cheque has cleared.
    It still needs 6 full working days between the cheque being deposited in an account and the possibility of the payee having the money removed from their account should the cheque bounce.
  • unholyangel
    unholyangel Posts: 16,863
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    Your bank may well allow you access to the funds from the cheque after 2 days but this doesn't mean that the cheque has cleared.
    It still needs 6 full working days between the cheque being deposited in an account and the possibility of the payee having the money removed from their account should the cheque bounce.

    Cheques can bounce several months later. Its rare mind you, just always wise to keep things like that in mind when scammers are a possibility!

    Was a case with the financial ombudsman if I remember right, involving one of those types of scams where they send you a cheque for say £10k, ask you to pay them/a third party £xk and keep the rest. Guy had specifically asked his bank if it had cleared and if there were any problems. Bank had told him it was all fine. He withdrew the money, passed it over to the scammer and then a few months later, bank came back and said it had bounced. Ombudsman upheld his complaint - but only due to the fact he had questioned the bank about the validity of that specific payment.
    You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means - Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
  • Cheques can bounce several months later. Its rare mind you, just always wise to keep things like that in mind when scammers are a possibility!

    Provided you have accepted the cheque in good faith and it is a Sterling cheque from a UK bank then if it bounces more than 6 full days after being presented to the bank, the money can't be reclaimed from your account.
    If this happens, the loss has to be born by the banks (or the person who provided the cheque if they can be traced).

    The case you mention probably happened because I would have thought that any sensible person would have, or should have thought it was suspicious and it probably made it appear that the payee knew there was something dodgy going on.
  • angryparcel
    angryparcel Posts: 926 Forumite
    about 20 years ago when i sold PCs, i once got an order from Cornwall who paid by cheque. the cheque was from The Kodak Foundation in the USA, which seemed strange, so i contacted the foundation and was told the cheque was fine ( i took the persons name who told me this), so stuck it in my bank and waiting as with it from a USA bank the physical cheque had to go from my bank to the USA bank to be cleared and then funds sent to my bank to be placed in my account which takes upto a month ( well did then), 2 weeks later i got a call from the police to say someone would like to call and discuss this cheque, well an officer come and explained the cheque was stolen, but because i have contacted the foundation about the cheque and as the cheque had to go to the USA and back again then they could do nothing to recover the funds
  • As the cheque you refer to was from a bank in the USA it wouldn't be covered by the 2-4-6 process so the money would always have been at risk should the cheque have been fraudulent.
    It's only Sterling cheques from a UK bank that are covered.
  • Maverick192
    Maverick192 Posts: 8
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    edited 19 June 2017 at 7:30PM
    I'm the OP - I just managed to gain access back to my original account here, as you can see I've lurked around for 8 years but this was my first post!!

    Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has replied in the thread so far. I agree that the company are the victim of the fraud as much, if not more so, than me.

    I don't want them to take the entire hit though (they are just a small family business, it's as hard for them as it is for me to lose £6k!) so I don't really want to play hardball with them, maybe that's me being soft, I don't know, it just seems fair to me if we each take partial accountability.

    I will however try the hardball approach with the receiving bank (I'm aware that my bank has technically done nothing wrong since I authorised the transfer), as I think they have let a bank account either be opened fraudulently (i.e. with a fake name that was incorrect) or allowed a genuine account to be used for fraud. I intend on taking that complaint as far as I can go and won't have any worries at all about demanding that a huge organisation like a bank should protect customers from fraudulent activity by preventing fraud or by preventing the opening of fraudulent accounts.

    As was said above, I should have checked the bank details first, although in this instance I fear I would have probably just emailed them to make sure that they got their pound, which of course the fraudster would likely reply to anyway. I was absolutely convinced about the authenticity of the account since I'd been dealing with with via email since the early quote stages and through all the decisions up to when they arrived on site. However, from now on I will always use credit cards with bank transfers as a last resort (and even then only done with the telephone call and one pound payment suggested above).
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