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?

I don’t care too much about the banks. I just don’t get why this is treated differently to everything else and why peoples money is always protected. Does this make it a victimless crime if you’re all happy for the banks to fund it?

Every requirement on a bank to behave in a certain way affects the profitability of a particular group of customers and will impact things like interest rates. Of course these costs are being passed on to ordinary consumers rather than shareholders.

I completely agree with the original poster that if you choose to indulge in a fantasy whereby a young man half your age, that you have never set eyes on is completely bowled over by you; and then you decide to not heed the warnings of friends, family and then the obligatory warning from the bank- it shouldn’t be up to me indirectly to compensate you.

@countrygirl99 Some of the ideas being proposed are slowing down payments. 99% of fraud happens in the faster payments system which means banks have very little chance of recovering funds. The government will consult on giving banks the ability to hold suspicious payments for 48 hours to investigate. The other big area of focus is the banks/payment firms that allow fraudsters and money mules to open accounts to receive the proceeds of frauds.

Obviously a large scale international law enforcement operation to dismantle the organised crime gangs being the vast majority of frauds would be a good start too...

@Flower35214 Yeah, I totally agree with you. But I guess until you're in that kind of 'hot state' it's hard to know what it's like. I've known far too many fraud professionals who think they know it all and then get caught out themselves.

The scammers can be very sophisticated. Don’t pride yourself that you definitely couldn’t fall for one, that’s not true.

The banks have removed a lot of the safeguards that would previously have stopped some of this, without consulting consumers, for the benefit of their own balance sheets.

Closing branches and not having a dedicated bank manager pushes more and more people to bank online, even if they don’t have the skill or knowledge to do so safely. Customers increasingly don’t have a choice.

The banks profit hugely from reduced infrastructure costs. It’s right and proper that they bear the brunt of this. It’s them that benefits most from the current set up. They can’t have it both ways.

The idea about reimbursement is mainly to make this kind of fraud the same in terms of a victim response as other types of fraud like if you have your card stolen or someone hacks into your bank account.

In a way I agree with you. But once the need to reimburse actually hits the banks profits, perhaps they will step up and stop the fraud. It's their lack of concern, not bothering to chase down money, allowing criminals to open bank accounts, not stopping money going abroad, not working together internationally that letting it happen

My FIL got scammed a couple of weeks ago @Raisinganiguana. He's a very sensible careful man, but the scammers happened to catch him on the day my DH was having treatment for cancer. FIL fell for the "my phone is broken Dad, and this bill has to be paid today" scam because he was already dreadfully worried about his son. Fortunately, the bank spotted it, rang FIL to verify and stopped the payment going through. FIL is still mentally beating himself up for falling for it. I think we should all remember that sometimes it's not just people being stupid.

So would you be happier if she lost the money then?

Companies have transferred to us responsibility to do things staff used to do e.g. Internet banking. If you go into a branch and transfer money they do various checks and make it clear if you lie its your responsibility

Lol. This is really not why there's a gap between savings rates and interest rates.

@DwightShrutesgirlfriend that's not a romance scam though is it? It’s not lots of money being sent over a period of time because he pretended he was in a relationship.

Also as a society we give very little support to people with lower level learning difficulties or early stage dementia. You are wanting to withdraw the tiny bit of support many do get I.e. help if conned.

Total consumer fraud in the UK is around £1.2 billion. Last year HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds and NatWest alone paid out more than £4 billion in Bankers bonuses. They can afford to do more

@Bex5490 I’d never be happy that someone lost their money no. But that doesn’t mean I also agree that we should fund people’s fantasies.

Absolutely. My mother was scammed. The money was sent to a Lloyds account. If Lloyds had done their know your customer checks properly, they should know exactly who was involved in the fraud.

They didn’t bother giving details to the police or clawing back the money though. They just wanted my pensioner mother to take the hit. Like she can afford it more than they can with their billions.

Lazy bastards.

I think it should be on a case by case basis.

But I also think the banks need to put more into keeping up with the scammers, not just wait till a bunch of customers get caught and then do something about it

The BBC show For Love Or Money is morbidly fascinating.

The amount of people who are told outright by friends, family, professionals etc that they are being scammed but who ignore everything and barrel on with their own idiocy is breathtaking.

One mistake such as falling for a phishing scam in an email is one thing. Persistently allowing yourself to be fleeced because you believe a hot 20 year old millionaire from the Med / Russian model has fallen for you, a 60-something grandmother / 70-year-old pensioner from Merseyside, is quite another.

Wow I hope you never need a safety net in the future and you meet someone like you.

Sheesh

But delaying payments will be to the detriment of legitimate payments. Every time an individual needs to make a big payment they will need to factor in the likelihood of delay you can imagine the wailing mumsnet posts. There are already frequent posts complaining because someone has even asked why they are making a large withdrawal/payment with a couple of pages of "how date they nosey buggers" responses. Branch staff have enough customer aggression to cope with already.
How do you identify a suspicious payment without catching too many/missing some.
How do you make it harder than it already is to open an account without making it too hard for the vulnerable?

I’m actually a very liberal and socially minded person, generally. I just don’t get this!

Steph was saying to the woman ‘I totally understand why you were scammed, it seems so believable.’

No it bloody doesn’t. A hot Canadian male model contacting an 60 whatever woman out of the blue, saying he loves you and is moving to Scotland, but first you need to send him money to fix an oil rig, is in no way believable. Its stupidity

I think you underestimate how very clever some scammers are. It’s not like they always come into your life on a Monday and scam you on a Tuesday.

This comes from someone who was scammed two years into what I thought was a genuine relationship. I have a degree and a high paying job. I don’t usually consider myself to be stupid. Turns out I was very naive but stupid, no.

Hope it never happens to you.

No, but it is a scam preying on people's emotional vulnerability. Hard to know who would be the judge of who deserves to get their money back and who doesn't, I guess?

Are you sure about that?

My husband works in this area in banking. His whole role is to try and help banks to stop scams-it's never ending. I don't really know what I think about this case, it wasn't a plausible scam!?

I kind of agree with you - but always worry that one day I'll be the injured party. Every one of these stories starts with someone saying they never expected it to happen to them etc