Have I been involved in fraud ?!

[cakeslenon6]

Hey everyone, I need some advice because I’m panicking right now.

I received a call from a friend I trust who said their account wasn’t working and they needed to make a payment for something. They asked if someone could send money to my account and then I forward it to my Revolut account so they could complete a payment through a Moonpig page. I agreed and didn’t really think anything of it at the time.

I received a transfer of £1,306 and followed their instructions. A few hours later, I tried to send the money on, but my account was suddenly restricted.

I checked my banking messages and they’re now asking for additional information about where the money came from, whether I know the person, and to provide any supporting evidence.

I’ve responded explaining what my friend told me and I’ve also sent a screenshot of the Moonpig request they mentioned. However, the conversation originally happened over the phone, so I don’t have any text messages or written proof of them asking me to do this.

I’m now really worried because I feel like I may have unknowingly been involved in fraud, and I don’t know what this means for me or what I should do next.

I have a holiday coming up next month and I’ve never experienced this before will the police get involved or would I have my account closed down what’s going to happen ?!

They absolutely can. The bank can close your account for any reason, and legally they don’t have to tell you why.

@FriendshipDynamic so your telling me you assume that I would risk my bank and my freedom to transfer money to another account for greed this is a joke and then willingly the other bank it’s fraud then ask my friend about it knowing I’ve done it also let’s not forget coming on Mumsnet and making a post about it … yes I was stupid I have myself to blame for trusting people to much I have autism and that’s what happens sometimes with some of us i genuinely thought i was helping a friend out

It’s not the voice it’s the personality behind it.

You can mimic someone’s voice through sampling, but you can’t mimic a close friendship the same way. And if it is a close friendship someone would absolutely know if it’s not the same person, or if they didn’t guess it wasn’t them they’d know the person was behaving oddly with no warmth, no conversation, no knowledge of the friendship and things people know about each other.

If my closest friend called me and said “I need you to put £1100 into your revolut for me so moonpay can take it” I’d know there was something off. Because my closest friend would have a conversation with me, about my family, about things only they would know about. If they just called with a demand/request it would be suspicious, and if you don’t think it would then you need to question whether the friendships you have really are as close as you think they are.

Even the text ones aren’t plausible yet if you look deeply enough. “Hi mum this is my new number” only works if you have one child. Ask which child this is and you’ll get “your favourite.” No identification, no common ground. It works more if you offer up the info i.e. “how’s uni going” but if you give them nothing to work with they have nothing. And no relationship. And as such you shouldn’t be giving them money.

There’s still too much missing to do this as a plausible AI. It absolutely is the friend.

No I don’t think you’ve necessarily done it for greed, I think you did think you stood to gain from it and possibly because it was your friend you thought that there must be some truth to it. Apologies if it came across as if I thought you were doing it out of greed, those relate more to the Nigerian prince, or the lottery someone has won they never entered.

But one of the reasons the digital currency ones work is because people are told that if they invest x amount of money they’ll make an untold amount in the next year. I see them at work, people being told that if they invest £200 they’ll have £30k by the end of the year. They do it because they believe they’re going to make money from it, and they don’t stop to think that generally if it sounds to good to be true it invariably is.

Also the digital currency market is so volatile that nobody can make those kinds of promises.

Your friend is 100% involved though and you need to turn him over to protect yourself.

Yes they need 3 seconds of a voice to fake your voice. You should never ever leave a personal voicemail on your phone.

Your friend may well be innocent in all of this. AI makes it easy to clone a persons voice to enable fraud.

Why don't they prey on Influencers - they often rabbit on about products they are trying to shill?

But you said they are not been done by AI at the minute and that's wrong they are. People fall for it, whether it's convincing or not. These AI voices are also getting past voice recognition security systems

That's not true, a bank can close your account if they just suspect fraud. They cannot load your details on to CIFAS as fraud without the burden of proof. At the moment they don't have to tell you why they are closing your account but that is changing in the very near future.

Yes they close the account while they investigate,but there has to be evidence.Technically they can close an account for no reason ,but this pretty much never happens.
They cannot freeze your assets without legal process , they would have to give you the money back,so what would be the point?

Not on a personal level they’re not.

There are bank scams etc, large organisations which are being done by AI, but not close friends etc. How would you pull it off exactly? You’d have to know about the friendship, who they are to one another, you might be able to hack into someone who’s not smart enough to have their social media locked down to the extent their friend list isn’t visible, but you absolutely wouldn’t have any idea as to the relationship between the two people, so if anyone falls for that then clearly the friendship wasn’t as close as they thought it was.

Or alternatively, and most likely, there are a lot of fraudsters out there using AI as a convenient cover.

AI is used to commit some scams, but AI has now provided the perfect alibi for lots of human fraudsters.

Scams will increase and it’ll all be blamed on AI while the genuine fraudsters get away with it.

Just explain to the bank, like you have here. There will be so many cases like this. It's all life learning, making mistakes, learn from it so to avoid in future. Xxx

This type of scam appears to be happening at this moment.
My aged aunt, who lives in the States has just warned me she nearly fell for exactly this scenario.

It was from a dear college friend of hers, no reason not to question it, but she did. She actually phoned her up and asked if she was okay. The friend confirmed she’d be hacked.

I’m so sorry you’re in this situation, let’s hope you can still get away on holiday and put this behind you

Except OP was contacted by phone call in the first place..

This doesn't sound like an impersonation scam at all imo - it sounds like OP has an incredibly dodgy friend who deliberately made sure nothing was in writing and is now trying to deny it and pretend someone else magically knew about their friendship and OPs Revolut account and used AI to pretend to be them

As was my aunt, but it was a message left, due to the time difference.

A bank can freeze your account if they suspect fraud or misuse they don't have to go via a legal process. A bank can and will exit a customer who they suspect is committing fraud or who poses a risk to the bank

I thought my 4.99 card order was a steep.