Just got scammed out of almost 1k

[BonneMamanAbricot]

Please be so careful of phone calls from your bank. Always call them back, as caller ID can be faked. My actual bank said they had never seen this scam. They duplicated everything, all the spiels, the robot connecting voice, the hold music.

Second month of being paid after 5 months of no income. Back to nothing again. FFS.

If "all" the information scamming bastards got from you is your sort code and account number, the bank has to refund you - you haven't authorised the payments or permitted them. It's the bank at fault, not you.

The code is to make the transfers. Once they are into your account the bank thinks it's you, but if you make a new transfer to a new recipient they always ask for a one time pass code to confirm the new recipient. That always goes to the phone registered with the bank. So they can't authorise the transfer without the code. That's the point at which op could have stopped the money coming out. However it is very concerning and doesn't explain how they hacked into her account in the first place.

I think the next time you receive a suspicious call, you should call the bank back on the number on the back of your card but with a different mobile phone number.

I once had a telephone call from the fraud team who asked if I was in El Salvador as there were suspicious transactions on my
account. They wanted me to verify a number of things. I simply called the bank back but I used my sisters phone and it was the generic bank phone number rather than any number they tried to give me .

It turned out it was the fraud squad but you can’t trust anyone who calls and says they are from the bank these days.

You can appeal this! Banks are obligated to cover you against fraud so dont take their word for it.
I was scammed out of nearly 10k with mobile banking fraud and the banks tried to get out of it but I was persistent and eventually got my money back. Its bullshit that they will only cover you if it remains in the original bank account its moved within.

Didn’t you check your account statement when they said there had been fraudulent transactions and seen there were none there? My bank almost never calls me. I’d be highly suspicious of any calls from them. I also only answer my phone to known numbers, local area codes and no caller IDs, never to a number I don’t recognise cos it’s never anyone I want to speak to!

Update, I called the bank and I have been refunded the money (didn't want to log onto mobile or online banking in case of malware). There have been no further attempts to transfer or make payments. So everything seems ok for now and will go into the branch tomorrow.

The code didn't go to the phone registered to the account, that's the problem, it went to a number the scammers managed somehow to attach to the account. The question is how did they do that?

That’s good and as it should be tbh.

Going back to this you said earlier:
The fraud dept said the scammer had accessed my accounts and set up multiple payees and transfers

I couldn’t do this on my bank account without having to verify every single one of the new payees separately. If your bank is not doing this too then it sounds like their systems are not robust enough.

Glad you’ve got your money back, must be a relief for you. Now change banks 🤣

Victim blaming is not helpful. They work on the fact that they will catch people who are busy, and catch them out.
Shaming people who have been caught out by a scammer. It's exactly what they want, because they know that lots of people, rather than admitting they've been scammed, will fall for further scams to try and get themselves out of it.
Digs like yours make it worse.
I work in an industry where we're often targeted by scammers and get lots of training on it. At the end of every talk about it our CEO says
"and the most important thing to remember, is that if you get scammed, tell us straight away and there will be no repercussions on you. I've nearly been scammed several times and know how easy it is to fall for it".

I have an account with Lloyds too, I don't use the mobile app but on the online log in you have to provide two pieces of information before you'd get to somewhere you could change the phone number. Does the mobile app not have any protection? You can just enter sort code and account number and you're able to change the phone number? That doesn't sound secure at all

Part of the trauma is wondering how you might have done things differently, a bit like the "What if..." after a car accident. Be kind to yourself OP, these scams are fiendish.

The bank would already have your bank account details. This is a classic scam OP, unfortunately it’s so easy to fall for them when you’re distracted. It could happen to anyone. I hope you’re able to get some of it back.

I think it depends on the scam tbh.

I think that a lot of banking scams for instance can be elaborate, and some scams can be simple e.g. you’ve got a parcel being delivered, and if you do it’s easy to fall for.

But anyone who falls for a romance scam is an idiot and I fail to see why the banks should compensate those.

I mean you meet some bloke you’ve never met and before you know it you’re sending him money to bail out his brother in a foreign country where he won’t be able to contact you and then he’s stuck in a Turkish prison and and and. If anyone is stupid enough to fall for that they have only themselves to blame when they’re conned out of hundreds of thousands.

A friend has a relative who gave £67k to a scammer and her children have disowned her because of it. Stupid stupid woman but 0 sympathy here.

Likewise the 419 scammers “I’m a crown prince and if you could just launder my millions through your bank account by paying me £££ first then I’ll give you a few million.”

Or “you’ve won the Canadian lottery which you didn’t enter but never mind, if you give me £££ then we’ll give you loads more dosh.”
There is only one reason why people fall for those scams. Greed.

I absolutely agree that no-one is infallible, and that there is a scam for everyone, even though I personally haven’t been scammed.

But there are plausible scams, and then there are scams where we need to do a bit more victim blaming such as the romance scams, because people need to start taking responsibility for their reckless behaviour rather than claiming victim status when the truth is well documented.

She doesn’t mean that the bank didn’t know those details but that as part of the security check they asked for them, which is a bit suspicious in itself as from memory it’s not usually details like that they ask for.

I always ask 'the bank' to verify themselves by my own security questions, telling me is my regular monthly direct debit for between £30 & £50 Better Leisure or Dogs Trust
(I have neither as a direct debit)
If they pick one, I say well done, 2nd question is that direct debit due on or before 15th of the month (again they can pick either 'yes' or 'no' incorrectly which they usually do although sometimes they hang up).

If they picked neither I'm pretty sure it's the bank, so will then ask a specific question eg how much did I spend in the hairdressers on 14th.
If they picked either yes or no, I'll, string them along as long as possible, scammers!

That does sound very concerning

I tend to agree with this. I suppose if I was pushing my empathy to the max I’d acknowledge that romance scams have a psychological element at play where the person is really attached to this ideal life they’re going to have with this person and so aren’t thinking straight. They’re maybe lonely and not in the best place in life. It is hard to get there though as you’d hope some rational part of their brain would be asking why is a millionaire businessman having to ask a stranger on the internet for money. Doesn’t he have friends or family?

She’s remembering correctly. I had exactly the same happen to me, but fortunately didn’t fall for it. My bank says it is common. The scammers steal your details from websites you may have bought something from that are less secure than others. Check the website security before you buy. My scammer actually sent the OTP to me via text as you would normally have, in exactly the same language, in the text thread that the bank usually send. HSBC says that there is something within your phone that recognises an OTP request and files it in the same thread. Bank/card texts state do not share this with anyone and when I pointed this out and wouldn’t share it, I got called a fucking cunt with a promise that they would take every penny I had!

The bit that annoys me is the banks can't chase the money back. Unless it's been withdraw as cash (or I supposed Cryto'd) then it's still in the banking system.

Ok so is this what happened?
They have DOB, address, mobile number, email and name of bank.
They go on the website to get access to the victims account but obviously don’t have pin or password. They then attempt to use forgotten details function using the victims stolen identity details. In order to fully change passcodes, they need an authorisation code from a verified device. So, they call victim pretending to be the bank. The fraudster then alerts victim to false transactions, give them the OTP code and asks them to enter this via telephone banking. The victim is speaking to their actual bank and shares the OTP code thinking she is stopping the fraud when she’s actually verified the fraudsters device. She was frazzled and instead of thinking why am I being asked to verify myself in order to stop the fraud, she rang the bank to give the code.

And the moral is….

The bank should have made clear what she was authorising. They are at fault IMO. NEVER share an authorisation code especially if you haven’t requested one in the first place.

They didn’t get her pin. They got her name and card number or account number. They attempted to make a purchase or transfer. They couldn’t proceed without a verification code - OTP which when generated by the bank goes to the account holder’s mobile phone not theirs. They then need the account holder to give them that code to authorise the transaction. Often if I’m shopping online with a new supplier or the amount of the transaction with an existing supplier is higher than a certain amount, I will have to use an OTP. The scammers are very sophisticated now and use psychological tactics to confuse or pressure their victims. They’ve also started using voices which wouldn’t necessarily raise suspicion. I was called recently by someone who was obviously educated, had an RP accent and sounded exactly like I’d expect a senior bank employee to sound. He almost convinced me.

They block the transaction and message you, telling you they have spotted a potentially fraudulent transaction and to call them. Sometimes there's an option of 1 - it was me or 2 - it wasn't me, so if you're abroad for example it's easier.
I also get any OTP in a text message that clearly says you should never share them with anyone and noone from the bank will ever ask for them, but if you do share it you won't be able to get any money back. I think they do as much as they can to protect customers from scammers.

unfortunately this is not correct. Last July, on a Sunday, I had a call on my mobile from someone claiming to be from my bank, saying that an attempt had been made on my credit card to take money and that I was to phone them back on the following number. I put the phone down and called the number on the back of my credit card (which Scam Interceptors tell you to do), told the person on the other end about the call and gave her the number which I had been told to call, She said the number was genuine, so I went into a mini rant, saying that my bank shouldn't call me, because we, the public are told, that if they do then it is probably a scam.
Fortunately, there was no money taken from my account, but my credit card was stopped for a month (which was a right PITA) whilst a new one was issued.

I came on to thank you so much for sharing your story which will help others. These criminals are vile.

So glad you got your money back.

But anyone who falls for a romance scam is an idiot and I fail to see why the banks should compensate those.

I know what you mean but having watched a few programmes about romance scams its quite obvious to me that the people being scammed have mild learning disabilities- you can tell by the way they talk about relationships and from what their family and friends say (reading between the lines). Therefore, its not really a fair fight as it were.