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?

Also banks used to ring you up to tell you to confirm details of transactions if they thought they were suspicious.

So the fraudsters started doing this and banks were pretty slow to act and change their practices and continued to blame customers for being caught out and not give them their money back until they were forced to.

I was caught out once, not financially but opening a document in an email and putting my password in at work, which had a virus. I blame Microsoft as at the time I was always being asked to put in my password in and I thought nothing of it.

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And where exactly do the bank's profits come from, do you think?

So you want rid of compensation?

It’s not as simple as that. To take over someone’s finances you have to prove they do not have capacity around finances.

Someone can have learning difficulties, even a kind of a good 12 year old, but be able to do a simple budget, have direct debits set up for bills and know what day they get their money etc.
They may have never gotten into any debt and stick to a routine of withdrawing money on certain days etc.

So under the mental capacity act, they have capacity around finances right?

But then they meet someone online who doesn’t have learning difficulties and is able to easily manipulate them into believing they are in love with them. Then make them believe that they are about to be made homeless or something unless they get X amount of money.

So the adult with learning difficulties sends them X amount of money. Because they have been emotionally manipulated into doing so. Even if the person is clearly a scammer and not a gorgeous model/Nigerian prince.

They may have capacity around finances but that doesn’t negate the fact are vulnerable with learning difficulties.

What do you do then? Stop them from ever managing their money again?

It happens to reasonably intelligent people so can easily happen to adults with learning difficulties.

They should be refunded, safeguarded and educated. Not told they can’t get their money back and someone is now taking Power of Attorney over their money.

I felt really sorry for the lady on Steph's Packed Lunch. As she was recounting the story the way she phrased it and the details she went into that she really believed it all. She was talking about his projects and such, still as if they were real 😢

The four biggest banks alone made £20bn in profits last year. I think they can afford £92m in compensation for romance scams - that’s about £1.50 per person in the country, and it’s not like they were going to pass those profits on to customers anyway.

The banks cost the UK government £137 billion in 2008, everyone had to bail the bank out - £92 million is a drop in the ocean

Everyone you make a bank payment now you get warnings about looking for potential scams and have to click you’ve read them to continue. If you wilfully ignore these what else can banks do?

Exactly

There's only so much can be done to protect people against themselves, so providing they've been warned like this I see no case at all for banks to compensate

FWIW I have a severely disabled son myself who lost out, though admittedly it wasn't a lot since he doesn't have a lot of money to give - and it wouldn't even have occurred to me to ask the bank to cough up

Would having more branches open really prevent this?

Unless you are planning to get rid of internet banking and force everyone back into a branch, then presumably these sophisticated scammers can persuade their vulnerable victims that it would be much better if they used internet banking and sent them the money for their oil rig repairs/airline ticket/gold bars/medical bill immediately?

I don't want to sound in favour on branch closures - I think elderly and vulnerable people need them in other ways. But unless you want to get rid of internet banking, there will always be the option to use it and if you are vulnerable enough to fall for whatever the backstory is to why your Internet lover needs the money, then it isn't that hard to make you use the Internet banking to send it.

Also, presume there must be some double bluff scamming going on where someone pretends they thought that Jean Claude the handsome pilot really was in love with them and needed some money to pay for his broken wing, claims to have been scammed, gets the money back from their bank and whoever was playing Jean Claude was in on it all along and they both have the money.

Of course crime victims should be reimbursed. Fraud takes many forms, not just romance scams. It often involves panicking and intimidating a vulnerable person.

Every single time though? What if they're not vulnerable, they are educated, and they ignored 17 different warnings, and the scam was one my 6 year old could identify?
Should they be reimbursed?

Totally get your frustration - my University Educated brother has been scammed many times (and no porn star looking models dont message very disable middle aged overweight men promising to immediately take care of you) He has been repeatedly told by family, friends, the bank, social services and even the police that they are frauds but wont listen. Yes he is vulnerable and the bank have reimbursed once when it was clear one of their processes hadnt worked BUT no I dont think they should in the future. We have put in many safeguards to try and avoid him paying but the scammers then come in via Amazon cards, online payment portals etc, Its exhausting

how do you think the banks make profits???

What do you think profits are? They belong to and benefit the bank and its shareholders, not customers.

The four biggest banks alone made nearly £20 billion in profits last year. £92 million in compensation to scam victims is small change to them. It makes barely a dent in their profits, and certainly doesn’t prevent them from deigning to pass a small proportion of their profits to their customers.

We do in a way though through interest rates.

Maybe your dismay should be directed at the scammers who do these crimes in the first place?

They add it to there overall costs which in turn is factored in when setting charges for every else to maintain a profit

so yes we do pay
just the same as supermarkets add the cost of lost stock through theft to the prices we pay on the shelf

That’s the spirit! 😂 🙄

I do think the romance ones are a bit predictable but scams with PayPal etc are becoming increasingly sophisticated so I wouldn’t want to tempt fate by suggesting all scam victims are idiots, personally.

Well, if they don’t refund people who have lost their life savings, we’ll still end up paying for them - just through the benefits system instead because they’re now impoverished and destitute.

£92 million - the amount paid out by banks for scams of this nature last year - is small change to them. It does not affect the rates the rest of us pay - or if it does, only to a tiny extent.

But it will be a cost built into the banks profit margins. If banks didn’t have to account for paying this then the rates may be different on savings accounts etc. how materially different I don’t know but ultimately it is the other customers picking up the cost.

Don't be so silly. Banks don't lose profits. They pay us lower interest rates to protect their profits.

This is how everything works in a capitalist society. Businesses protect their profit margins. They expect a minimum increase of more than inflation every year. So if a businesses made 4% extra last year and their costs increase by 15 % this year because of inflation, they put up prices by 20% to protect their profits and adda bit. WE pay for everything.

We pay for our own additional living costs , we pay for those of every business we buy from - every shop's/cafe/hotel/landlord, company's increases in power, rents, staff wages, mortgages, taxes, repairs, whatever they sell.

It all comes down to us. Capitalists never lose out. If it costs them, they pass the cost to us.

And if they don’t get compensated for losing their life savings, and are left impoverished and destitute, do you think we aren’t then going to be paying for them through the benefits system?

As if banks and bankers have never scammed money off the public and their customers.
It was ok when they were bailed out. How do you think that impacted on the economy?

Im glad the woman got her money back and hope others do too. I mostly hope measures are put into place to curb this behaviour though. I also dont believe in victim blaming.

Does it make people more reckless if they think they will get their money back anyway? If you get one of these you've inherited a load of money but you need to send us £10,000 for expenses and we'll send you a couple of million, do you think probably a scam but could be true, nothing to lose in giving it a go the bank will give me my £10,000 back if it's a scam. Obviously to get your money back you're not going to tell the bank that you thought it probably was a scam. Extreme example, but if you know you will get refunded if you do something a bit stupid you might take a chance on some dodgy scheme, like investment scams.