I work as a fraud Investigator for a main high street bank AMA!

[confusedlady10]

Well technically I have just left (hence me feeling comfortable to share my day to day job) as I am starting a new job in a new field!

I am not sure if I feel comfortable to say which bank still, but I used to work as a senior call centre employee and investigator in the fraud department of a main high street bank and used to work in the main call centre role before then (logging the fraud and day to day banking queries). I still spoke to customers on the phone after becoming an investigator, just not as much as before.

I will try to answer as many questions as possible if I get any. I dealt with customers who are fraudsters and those who have been scammed/frauded. I have left now to work in a completely different field for much better pay after accepting a job so can happily talk about this one.

Did you ever observe cases where bank staff were suspected of being the fraudster, e.g. insider threat?

My MIL died a few years ago. Her two sons had POA but one, my DH, was ill and the other was living with her. £1000 cash went missing from her account via her bank card. The bank called, she confirmed it wasn’t her (household) and they refunded it. The next time they didn’t bother ringing….. eventually my darling BIL had taken £85k, some in cash, the rest via debit card transactions at shops she couldn’t physically visit for things she wouldn’t use (sports equipment, jewellery, dog food, holidays). He’d also given his adult kids £16k. I didn’t discover all this until she died and he drained the remaining money from her account.

The bank refused to investigate because it said he had the right because he had LPA. This is untrue. The police arrested him but the CPS refused to prosecute because they said there was insufficient evidence. I’d marked up seven years of bank statements. What would you have advised in this situation ?

I would like this to as someone I know was scammed out of a significant amount of money and they were sent to a particular branch in London (which was some distance from home). The manager didn't have a name badge on and he did a number of other things which were suspicious to do with passcodes etc.. They did get their money back but we always wanted to know what happened.

No we never had anything like that. Wasn't worth it because every employee transaction is time stamped on the system, and for every single time they go into any system and out of it and shows what they did/are doing with their employee ID and name. They would be caught immediately and would be a rather stupid way to get caught (and fired for gross misconduct) which would look badly on references, especially when applying to another regulated role where the bank would be legally obligated to report it.

Although once, when I used to work in branch, I heard about an employee from a different branch who stole £5k from their branch's safe and took it home. Was rather stupid as there are cameras everywhere and we can see on the system who logged into the safe. She was caught immediately and arrested at her house. The bank agreed to drop the police investigation (I was told, have no idea how this legal stuff works) and she returned half the money and paid the rest back in instalments and was fired from gross misconduct instead.

There's cameras everywhere in the branches, codes to get into every computer and safe and an employee ID trail left immediately. Also if their till is wrong it will flag up any differences in cash immediately as well. It would be rather stupid for an employee to try and commit any type of fraud on a customer's account or on the bank or use a customer's details. Not saying it doesn't happen (as I've seen stories in the news) but they get caught immediately anyway. Especially when the bank has their address, NI and all personal details and contact details from when they joined, in order to track them down.

We get this a lot in the fraud department. It's disgusting. I'm sorry to say that about your BIL, but I just find it so evil that some POA prey on the very person they are supposed to help financially protect. We get a lot of money grabbers who are very pushy about POA and clearly don't care about the person's well being and just their money. And it's usually the kid's whose parents are loaded that insist on POA. When the parents are average or not well off they don't care.

We have a specialist team (for those who are in prison, elderly, disabled, DV or vulnerable for e.c.t) and they work in liaison with our transaction monitoring team who monitor suspicious activity, especially on those with POA. They monitor large transactions, unusual payments and unusual types of payments (such as someone elderly who only uses chip and pin suddenly making large online payments and vice versa).

They would have flagged up and detected these kind of things to prevent them and block the account and would question your BIL deeply and we would initiate banking protocol and call the police. We would tell customers who are concerned about safety of a family member’s account to report it to the police and Action Fraud as well. We can log civil/domestic cases when they have been reported to the police with the crime reference. Just because someone has LPA doesn’t mean they are entitled to take money out of the persons account when they like. The purpose of POA/LPA is to protect the persons account they are looking after.

My bank are VERY strict on this. We don’t even allow large payments or cheques to be written out in anyone’s name apart from the account owner(so MIL) or for a specific bill with proof. It can’t just be withdrawn for anything and the POA also has to provide proof with a reasonable explanation of why they are doing the transaction/purchase.

I would have blocked up the account and requested proof from the BIL (if we get any referrals from concerned family) and referred your dear MIL to our specialist team and asked if there is anyone else who can support and asked them to go into branch with ID for a private conversation with one of our bank managers. I would then set up a case to try and recover the money, and some banks write off certain payments or agree to refund half (whether the person is alive or passed when it happened). After they have passed it is a bit harder to prove sometimes which does make it harder for banks to accept liability or try to help though.

I’m sorry for the long paragraph but your bank sounds incompetent and this is a topic I'm very passionate about.

the irony in this though is that when you are doing anything in relation to a mortgage/house, which is usually the absolute biggest purchase anyone makes, is it all has to be via bank transfer! deposit, overpayment, etc., bank transfer/CHAPS was the only option my solicitor would accept.

Yes a house purchase is different I forgot to mention that. Only use CHAPS for those! Most banks will only accept it through CHAPS anyway due to the large amounts and the risks involved.

If you don’t mind me asking, what field did you change to afterwards? Are you still in financial services

Was it hard to change fields? I’m very keen to but seems competition is crazy in this job market, and worry having transferrable skills isn’t enough