Why should we all pay for those who’ve been scammed?

[Raisinganiguana]

I’m watching Steph’s Packed Lunch and there’s a woman on there who sadly got romance scammed for £30k. Afterwards, the financial expert was really clear that if this happens to you, the banks have to give you your money back. He even said they can’t ‘weasel’ out of it.

I’m sorry for the lady, but why should everyone else pay for what is essentially someone choosing to give someone else money? We don’t pay people back if they gamble it away, so why do we demand it just because they’ve fallen for a story?

She wasn’t someone very old or vulnerable. She chose to send this man money.

btw the scammer’s story was ridiculous - and the man’s photos were actually of some super hot model - so how one falls for these is another thing….especially as there are back to back warnings everywhere and on every bloody programme nowadays.

AIBU that people need to take some responsibility?

This.

People don’t understand how big a difference billion is from million.

A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years.

institutions don’t have money, people pay for everything. If the bank’s costs go up, they charge more for their services so the other customers pay for it. If, in the unlikely event they did not pass the cost onto other customers (and therefore make less profit) than the shareholders pay for if through lower dividends and / lower capital appreciation. The shareholders will be in part, pension funds, so retired people ‘pay’ through getting less money in their pensions.

They charge what they can get away with.

These are multinational scams often involving enslaved people facilitated by social media platforms and utilising the banks' own mechanisms. These private companies including banks need to be putting in controls, not shifting the blame onto their own customers when they lose money to fraud enabled by banking mechanisms.

"we all" don't pay for it the banks insurance does and no I don't agree with you, not only "old people " are vunerable
Women get scammed by partners they known for years

Gamblers don't get manipulated to do that neither do drug addicts
Love scams take months of emotional manipulation

As someone who had a lot of trouble convincing my ex that no, his favourite actor wasn't messaging him on Facebook Messenger offering him a job writing scripts for his show (and by the way could he have some iTunes cards), I relate so much to that comment. I managed to talk my ex out of asking his family for a loan to pay customs fees on a non existent package stuck in Thailand (I don't think the family would have paid it) but I think he still believes there was really a job and I stopped it because I didn't want him to succeed.

It all comes down to maintaining consumer confidence (a hard sell, tbh, given the mess the world has been in since the last global economic crash caused by banks’ reckless behaviour). The banking system is based on trust - trust by consumers that their money is looked after by the banks as the money experts and that banks can be trusted with money. If banks are allowing fraudsters to open accounts for fraudulent purposes and then disappear into the ether with the money, then the banks are facilitating fraud. The system of money being moved around the world quite so easily was never designed with the everyday consumer in mind - it’s designed to facilitate world trade and to enable the financial markets to make massive profits, including out of the savings of ordinary people. Vast amounts of money are made, stolen and hidden via banking transactions. Rather than slow down the pace of profit-making transactions, and have a close eye kept on their activities by regulators who might insist on more onerous checks and security, banks have agreed to take the hit when the little people lose some small change (from the bank’s point of view). Rather that than eat into their real profits by keeping a close eye on everything else they get up to - worth it if it maintains the trust of the little people.

I fell for a scam two weeks before I had my baby this year, where someone called up claiming to be Nationwide reporting fraud on my account - be it baby brain or having my guard down from doing stressful phone calls all of that morning, but I fell for it. Had £1400 of money I’d been saving up by working overtime, selling stuff of mine to build up a baby fund. I was very grateful for the bank refunding me because unfortunately the people who commit this kind of fraud can be quite clever, your guard may just be down, it happens. I’m definitely not of low intelligence and am generally quite savvy. I don’t know what I would have done if the bank had said ‘yeah you shouldn’t have fallen for that, no money back sorry, you’re the idiot’.

We all bail out the banks when they fuck up the world economy with demonstrations of incredible greed, recklessness and stupidity, but if you fall victim to romance fraud, then you deserved it, you idiot. 😏

@Raisinganiguana - my actual question is, why would you rather refund someone whose phone is nicked because they had it hanging out of their pocket than refund someone who has been groomed by a fraudster?

Seemed normal? You do know that mental or emotional disorders or past traumas are invisible conditions don't you? I mean we don't know for sure if she had something like that but we wouldn't tell by looking! Same with neurodivergent issues.

@Walkaround but didn’t I explain that in the post on that matter? Because we don’t refund people who have their phone taken from their pocket as society says ‘they deserve it’ even though I’d argue a momentary lapse of judgement. However - thinking about the case in question - the woman sent £30k over 16 months. Despite warnings. Despite SPL doing numerous stories on romance scams. Why is this ok?

Also, you’ve not explained why you suddenly asked if I blamed women who were raped. I’m still struggling to see any connection?

Can we agree those scammed because they were being greedy or thinking they were facilitating transfers of huge amounts from Princes should not get anything back.
The two most effective way to scam someone is through emotional connection, for example I need urgent medical treatment, or through playing to their greedy nature. You gave to sympathise with an emotional scam as we can all end up there, but the greedy can suck it up as far as I am concerned.

Yes, we all fell for the biggest scam in history, bailing out the banks again and again when their reckless behaviour results in them being bankrupt. And for some weird reason we believe they won't do it again and they do. So falling for a romance scam is nothing compared to what we have all fallen for and continue to fall for.

If anything people in general would probably have more difficulty in opening bank accounts and get credit as a result of this? I supposed that we all eventually face consequences for the number of people getting scammed this way.

@Raisinganiguana - quoting you again. Do you see the bit where you say you would “rather refund the nicked mobile”? I then pointed out how inane your comparison was between romance fraud, which is a grooming crime, and opportunistic theft of a mobile. I then referenced other crimes that involve grooming (or do you not understand that grooming can lead to all sorts of abuse, not just financial fraud?) to make the point you were being attributing more moral blame to the painstakingly, deliberately groomed person than the careless person. Now do you see the connection?

Someone I know gave someone 5k and it was so obvious it was a scam. Bank repaid her and said she had been victim of a ‘romantic scam’. I couldn’t believe anyone would fall for this particular scam. I’ve told her to let me know next time she wants to give money away and I’ll talk some sense into her

You only need to look to people like Andrew Tate to see that he has a similar attitude towards the easily manipulated. It’s the “they deserve what they get” school of thought. It’s just so much easier to be sympathetic towards a moment’s carelessness than towards someone you consider vain, stupid and pathetic, isn’t it, @Raisinganiguana?

Gamblers and drug addicts get lured in and made to think "they can handle it".

If the love scams are paid back because the emotional manipulation took months, what about the "phone calls from the police or hospital scams"? There is no long term manipulation. They are lured into thinking something, same as gamblers and addicts. Or the cryptocurrency scams? The men who stop at your door to ?"fix" your roof or drive?

Drug addicts generally get the drugs they pay for and gamblers spend their money on gambling, as intended. With a scam, you do not get what you paid for.

There is absolutely no insurance for this kind of stuff for banks ! And even if there were ... then the insurance premiums would go up and that would increase bank costs which would then be passed along to consumers in higher charges, interest rates etc.
We all pay in the end ! I'm not saying the banks shouldn't refund in certain cases but don't be under any illusion ... the customers of the banks will be ultimately footing the bill.

They may or may not be sophisticated but clearly enough people are taken in by them to make them worth doing.

A colleague in our business just ‘fell for’ what we all assumed was a very obvious scam. He received an email from our boss via his ‘personal’ email address telling him that he didn’t have his card but he needed something like Apple vouchers asap. We’ve had lots of these and email warnings are sent out each time telling us that our boss would never ask any of us for money.

This colleague still forked our £400 before thinking to check with another colleague if it was legit. He really isn’t an idiot, he’s actually very bright and switched on, but he has just lost his dad after a short illness which in my opinion makes him vulnerable. Under normal circumstances he would never have fallen for this but when he’s been upset and his mind is elsewhere he was an easy target.

I feel really sorry for him and don’t blame him at all. He’s already kicking himself, it would be twattish of us to be lining up to kick him again.

@Raisinganiguana people are asking you questions because we are curious just which victims you are comfortable blaming. I don’t see much consistency in your answers, just a particularly hard heart towards a particularly pathetic set of victims.

The savviest of folk? Of course not. But exactly where to draw the line in law would be a terrible question. Insurance is intriguing but not a viable option - people will not insure, and then all hell will break loose. (Think of American health care). Compassion and common sense coincide.

The thing is with a lot of romance scams it's not "a moment" of carelessness.

Falling for a phishing scam in an email is a moment of carelessness.

Persistently sending money to someone you've never met who you believe is in love with you when all your friends and family are begging you not to is plain idiocy.

@Flickersy - just like it is plain idiocy to follow Andrew Tate? He has argued that victims of sexual assault need to take their share of the blame. Maybe women who dress in short skirts are idiots, too. Women who let themselves be manipulated into sexual acts on the internet - idiots.