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 ?!

Sadly some people are vulnerable and that’s why they are targeted by crooks.
OP please go to the bank and talk to someone face to face. They will advise on whether you need to report to police. As others have said, do not contact your friend before reporting this.

The friend was communicating with the OP on behalf of the third party, who OP trusted because of the connection with the trusted friend. It wasn't the friend who was requesting money, it was the friend of the friend. The OP trusted that if the friend was asking, it was ok.

Best answer. Also OP, why would you even be friends with someone involved in high level criminal fraud? This is definitely not petty theft or shoplifting a drink.

And for some reason I guessed the "friend" was male before you even mentioned it. If you ever had or hope to have a romantic relationship with him, you need to take a good hard look at yourself.

I really like your cryptic clue.

Agreed.

Often the payment in is also a result of a scam. People get a text, Snapchat, WhatsApp, some how get scammed into sending the payment into another person who was scammed bank account, and then they move it into C-money for the overall scammer. So a long line of victims.

Sorry, I think I miss understood, I thought the bank had blocked you from transferring the money on. I agree, don't contact your friend, just be honest with the bank

Sorry this isn't helpful to the OP but does everyone else find it so frustrating how many posters don't read the whole thread or at least the OPs posts before posting?

Cancel the cheque Moonpig card

Yes it does sound dodgy. Rinsing money. Your friend might be naive to what they are doing too.

Have you checked the balance of your own accounts? I would actually be shitting my pants with worry, not about fraud, about my details being used and my account being cleared out.

If you really were talking to a friend, there is a chance that it’s not fraud, and equally possible that your friend was being scammed themselves.

I’d be getting straight into a branch to try to sort it all out ASAP.

What a crazy thing to do.

Highly doubt it. Moonpay isn't something you can trick someone into using because it involves trading digital currency into fiat. You need quite a bit of knowledge to know your way around. There was a similar platform called Tornado that was shut down because they did exactly this by washing real money to make it untraceable. He was almost certainly offered a huge cut of the profits once they turned it into digital currency and he scammed OP by using her bank account without paying her anything.

It might be AI posing as your friend.

Have you checked the balance of your own accounts? I would actually be shitting my pants with worry, not about fraud, about my details being used and my account being cleared out.

The concern isnt with OP's money being taken, the concern is that she is flagged as someone who facilitates fraud and worse case scenario is that the bank closes her account completely and she then cannot open another account due to this fraud being attached to her identity. This is unlikely to happen since it's a first time but she does need to contact the bank and explain ASAP

If that person's account 'wasn't working', how did you think they were able to send you money?

It was flagged as a suspicious transaction possibly the sender looks suspicious and it actually is a bit of a dodgy situation accepting money from an unknown person and passing it on. If as you say you were an innocent party it should be OK and it probably was a genuine thing if you trust your friend although they may be into something. Rather small beer for money laundering, but I guess they might have asked you to do it again for bigger sums.

These scams work because people are put under subtle pressure to 'help'. We are socially programmed to 'be nice'. Also, email scams make every effort to add all the 'we will never call you about this' stuff that banks do. I got an email last week saying "Confirming your new direct debit" then saying "if you have any concerns call our customer service team". I don't bank with the bank that 'sent' the email so I knew it was a scam, but if I saw an email from my bank and that they would be taking £437 the next day, would I just click the number to call it, or would I stay cool and go to my bank website to get the number, etc? Some people would, some would get caught.

if I saw an email from my bank and that they would be taking £437 the next day, would I just click the number to call it, or would I stay cool and go to my bank website to get the number, etc? Some people would, some would get caught.

totally irrelevant to what happened here.

Who spends £1300 on moonpig!!

🙈🙈🙈🙈

Isn’t revolut an online only bank?

This is what Google says Moonpay is -

MoonPay is a financial technology company providing "on-and-off-ramp" services that allow users to buy, sell, and swap cryptocurrencies and NFTs using traditional payment methods like credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and bank transfers. It acts as a bridge, delivering crypto directly to a user's personal wallet in over 180 countries, rather than holding funds like a traditional exchange.

It is crypto, personally would touch it with a barge pole.

You are in trouble OP. Do as the banks and police tell you. Make sure you are really talking to the banks and police and not an AI.

Except, of course, the money has originally come from a real victim - a victim of a scam or theft for example. And the money, once clean, doesn't go to pay someone's rent or for groceries - it goes on to support other illegal activities.

Very unlikely...AI scams aren't that sophisticated yet. Voice cloning models require at least 1hr of high quality audio data to create a believable, casual speech model. Some may work with a few sentences but the final result can be weird and stilted which will definitely get picked up when trying to speak on the phone with a real life friend. It would be impossible to obtain the datasets for such a scam unless your friend is a professional podcaster or influencer where you can retrieve audio files online.

The phone call presumably also went out from his phone so the criminals would have had to hijack the sim card, spend tons of money setting up a voice clone and then call his contact list hoping on person will bite. The pool of contacts who you can ask such a favour from is tiny, so they would only have about 5-8 shots at even completing the scam. They would also have to work quickly because they have no idea of knowing if they're calling a close friend, a sibling, an ex girlfriend after a horrible breakup or a work colleague from 10 years ago. If they called the wrong person it would only be a matter of time before they alerted him.

Setting up an AI scam like this is literally not worth investment. Whatever money they sank into creating a voice clone is also wasted because they can only use it to scam contacts from that one person.

Most likely answer is that the friend is a scammer and knew OP has a Revolut account (for whatever reason we don't know). Since Revolut is also notoriously popular with criminals he hoped they wouldn't question or stop the money. If he tried that with someone with a mainstream bank then the payment would have been flagged immediately.

Sounds more like you are (nearly) a victim of fraud. The bank recognised a dodgy transaction leaving your account so blocked it. You haven't done anything wrong.

It’s very easy to pay money into an account . Just need sort code and account number. These are actually printed on cheques, if anyone remembers them, and on debit cards. Harder to transfer money out. Someone would have to pass on all their security details to someone else.