Today my DH said 'why do we have no money??'
I told him not to be so ridiculous, because we have been working really hard to save money and build up a buffer in our account. So I looked at our bank account: available balance £14.
Someone has used almost £2000 on Next and Foot Asylum purchases, with a pizza and a dessert order thrown in 
.
The irony is that I never buy from Next because we can't afford for me to buy new clothes. I only ever buy from charity shops or (very rarely) Primark. So the fraud claim is very easy to prove. That and the fact that the man on the phone from the bank had to tell me what Foot Asylum is 
.
The transactions were all in the last day or so, and were all made using DH's card. We also had a letter today from Next, addressed to a man we've never heard of, thanking him for advising them if his change of address. So Next have given us a fraud case ID number and have put a block on account applications from our address. The bank fraud team will contact us tomorrow.
How gutting. We're lucky that DD1's DLA gets paid into a different account, so we can use that for a few days and reimburse it when we get reimbursed by the bank. If it got paid into the same account we'd be absolutely done for.
AIBU?
Our bank account has been cleared out
lougle · 04/06/2016 22:32
Happened to me too. £2,000 stolen and not sure where it went but the narratives related to 14 separate car insurance payments 
The bank refunded it the next day and then sent a declaration form out that I had to sign. It was obvious fraud as the payments were from another country. PITA though.
Hope you get it sorted!
Oh lougle what a horrible thing! I hope it's sorted quickly for you.
I,m shocked reading how many of you this has happened to.
I remember reading a thread here a while back, and a poster said her DH was an IT person advising banks on Internet security etc, and she said how he/they never banked online as it just isn't safe 
About 8 years ago DS had his card cloned at the petrol station nearest to his school (6th form). AIR he had quite a hard time getting it back, even though the transactions were in some 3rd world country and he could prove he was sitting at his desk in the UK studying for A levels at the time.
We were also victims of what we believe was internal fraud. We had a bank loan from our main bank and the money was put straight into our account. Within a day or so I noticed some small amounts to Thomas Cook then a payment of some £600 (a lot in those days). Thomas Cook were more helpful than the bank while we were trying to sort it out.
The bank never would tell us what happened but said that somebody in Manchester "thought [we'd] bought them a holiday" 
. We lived on the Kent coast and couldn't afford a holiday. WTF we'd be buying one for total strangers I don't know.
Had we not had the loan paid into the account there wouldn't have been any funds for them to take as we were always up to our OD limit, which is why I remain convinced it was someone in the bank.
I checked my account a few days ago and there'd been a $180 transaction for a PayPal account that I don't remember making. Phoned bank (First Direct) and asked them what it was, they could only tell me it was an online retailer but said I could have the money back straight away and they'd contact the merchant to query it! I still don't know if it was fraud or if I've just bought something online that I've forgotten about
Had my details stolen years ago too, Alliance & Leicester this time. Someone used it in France for £1 to test if it would work and so the bank blocked it away and phoned me to ask if I was on holiday. Sadly I was in a supermarket in my home town!
Lougle I hope that the bank sort this out quickly for you.
My credit card had fraudulent transactions on it after I spent a weekend in London many years ago. I only used my card in Madam Tussauds and Harrods buying the cheapest thing I could find that had Harrods on it , but obviously the details were written down by somebody.
The purchases were all for cinema tickets or concert tickets, like V and Glastonbury. I reported it to the police at the request of the CC company and then got all the money refunded. The CC were happy that it was all fraudulent as they had delivery addresses for all the tickets and they were all in London, which is nowhere near where I live.
ReginaBlitz, no I didn't contribute to the bank balance thread and was quite at the detail people were going into. It didn't save me though, did it?
So the bank now think that DH's card wasn't cloned, but that somehow they've got the details online. We use Norton 360 and have Verified by Visa, so in theory we should be protected, however, the plot thickens.
I spoke to the fraud Dept this morning, who say that they will stop the £282 in-authorisation claims leaving the account overnight and will refund the £1684 processed transactions tomorrow. Then they will send out a declaration, as other posters say, for us to sign. DH's card was cancelled yesterday and a new one ordered. New PIN also in progress. So far so good.
About 30 minutes later, the fraud Dept phoned back to speak to DH. DH has history with our bank in that he is notorious for mucking up the security checks and getting blocked. Then I have to phone and explain that he has locked us out of our account, much hilarity ensues, I pass a billion extra security checks and they reset it. So much so that only I phone the bank now. It's easier all around. So DH hasn't phoned the bank in probably 2 years.
Anyway, the fraud lady said 'When you phoned yesterday about your account, you had some trouble getting access'. DH said 'No, DW spoke to a man who took all the details and it was fine.' She said 'No, when you phoned, you had trouble...' DH said 'But I didn't phone you.' She said 'Or records show that you phoned yesterday afternoon.' DH said 'Well we did, my wife did. But I didn't....'
It turns out that 'DH' phoned the bank and knew his memorable name (which is used in Verified by Visa, incidentally), but then failed all the other security checks, so was passed to branch level, where he failed further checks so wasn't allowed access. This must have been just before we discovered our empty account!
Sorry to all who have been through this. It isn't pleasant.
I hope it gets sorted soon!!
On a different note, whenever I top-up my Starbucks Rewards card through the app, my card always gets blocked.
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