Really need advice here - bank account fraud

[daisydotandgertie]

Our bank accounts have been emptied by some fraudsters.

They accessed it via the telephone banking system (had 2 tries which were wrong, and then successfully got through).

Once they were in, they extended our overdraft limit, transferred the contents of our savings account into the current account and then transferred pretty much the whole lot away into their own account.

They've also taken some more money out in the form of internet purchases.

We have been talking to the bank for 2 hours this morning about it and I am horrified by what has gone on. Does anyone know where I can find out our rights or the bank's obligation?

The bank have said they will investigate the matter, but really haven't been very helpful. There are direct debits which need to come out, but the bank have said they may not be honoured because there isn't enough money in the account and they can't extend the overdraft because they have no proof we are who we say we are! (Oh, if only they'd applied that logic with the fraudster).

The bank have also said it looks as though there has been a complete identity theft so we should beware.

To top it off, not only have the bank allowed someone to steal all of our money, they said the only way we could arrange a temporary overdraft extension was to go to our local branch with 2 forms of ID. They said the branch shut at 1pm.

The branch is more than 15 miles away, so we hotfooted it to the town with our ID and arrived with 15 mins to spare only to find the branch shuts at 12.30. A waste of time and petrol.

This bank is not helping us very much at the moment.

Does anyone know about the banks obligation to us? To keeping our money safe and making sure they don't allow someone to steal it?

Forgot to add - we're a bit worried about what we're going to live on for the next couple of weeks - am I being unreasonable to expect the bank to safeguard our money?

Thats shocking! Can you manage over the weekend? I personally would go there first thing on monday morning and refuse to leave until they did something. I'm not sure if that is any practical help (probably not) but i agree that something needs to be done by the bank, can you go above them at all?

We can manage over the weekend thanks - luckily no direct debits or anything happen over the weekend and we have enough cash and food to last.

The scary thing is the bank can't tell us how long the investigation will take, so we don't know when we'll get the money back. I am shocked that we are the ones who have to do without while the thief(s) spend our money. I didn't think that would happen. I thought it would be a bit like when a direct debit goes wrong and that bank is obliged to repay you immediately.

We'll be on the doorstep at the bank when it opens on Monday and we'll be there until it is resolved, no matter how long it takes.

You'll get all your money back - but it might take a week or so.

I had a cheque book intercepted somewhere in the postal system and around £1,200 was stolen from my account. My account was frozen while the matter was investigated. Took about five days.

The stupid thing was that neither the bank or police had any interest in tracing the fraudster - even though they knew exactly who it was.

If you have any monies due out in the next week or so you might have to contact the receivers and tell them that the payment may be late due to fraudulent activity on your account.

We had this happen to us recently,dh had only used his cc on 2 shopping sites & someone who worked in one of them sold our details to the hacker.

They bought an accessory for their phone for something like £2,then when they knew it worked they went shopping to Tesco & spent over £200 & then bought some more things online for £100.

Luckily our bank,first direct, raised a flag & the transactions were cancelled.

They rung us to ask if we had authorised the said transactions & when we said no they started an investigation.

We were refunded our money back within a couple of days but we had to fill a form in & actually since then we havent heard anything back.

What bank are you with? I think they are not giving you good customer service.What makes them think your identities have been stolen?

I hope you get all this sorted out soon.

I wish we were with first direct!

We're with Abbey and I am really shocked by their attitude tbh. They are treating us as though we are the criminals. In fact it's their attitude which has shocked me more than the fact it's happened.

My parents have been done a couple of times and their bank (Lloyds) have been fabulous. I didn't expect it to be so different at Abbey.

The bank have warned about ID theft because of other activity apparently - and because the fraudsters have proved they have my DH DOB, and our address. It seems as though they have moved onto our credit cards as well.

Monday is going to be a long day on the phones I think. We will have to do one of those checks on who has applied for credit in our name too.

Makes me want to keep all our cash in a box under the bed!

If i were you i would be ringing round now cos they could be on the internet buying god knows what!!

TBH i am shocked at your bank,thats quite shitty of them,they should offer you more help than they have given.

Could somebody have been through your rubbish & filtered your personal info?

We thought of the rubbish, but we don't put anything which could contain personal details in the bin. We put it into an incinerator, so it just can't be that.

We have started the warning phone calls, but of course it's a Saturday and most fraud departments are closed over the weekend.

I'm sure the thieves are well aware of that tbh.

have you been to the police yet? you will need to report it before you get your money back

My bank stopped my card as there was a request payment for £1. How can all this money be taken?!?!?

Well - we did go to our local police station which of course was closed so we used the telephone on the wall outside.

The police say there's nothing they can do as 'identity theft isn't a crime until they've stolen your identity' ???

From what I've read it is down to the bank to work with the police with regard to criminal activity but to be honest, I don't really believe the woman on the end of the police phone!

I think it might be a case of Saturdayitis. She wouldn't give us a crime number because 'a crime hasn't been committed'.

WTF? Someone has nicked all our money. That's a crime in my book.

a crime hasn't been committed?? ring back and get their name.

Abbey are crap. I had about £25K emptied out of my business bank account and only found out because I logged on - Abbey didn't even spot the transactions, despite the fact that they were for gold jewellery in Saudi, computers in India etc (all completely unusual for that account).

I had a similar experience to you - couldn't get through to anyone. Coulodn't get a single person to deal with the case.

They also wanted to charge me for a temporary overdraft...

In the end I got action (I believe) because I...

1. posted on all the relevant websites (Money-Saving expert; BBC WOrking Lunch; Mumsnet about how crap it all was...
2. I scoured their website and the web and found the e-mail of their Head of Communications and sent links to all my blog posts. I also mentioned I'd been approached by a TV programme who were interested in featuring my 'case' (true, even though I didn't want to do it and publicise my financial affairs!)

Miraculously things suddenly started to happen, and I got my cash back within a couple of days (about 10 days after it went out though...)
Strangely, whenever I phone the bank now they put me through to a 'supervisor' straight away, and are vvvvv helpful.

Perhaps a coincidence

The police thing is true - apparently it is no longer their responsibiity to follow up these crimes - it is the banks, and the bank then reports them back to the police (if they choose to, which often they woudl prefer not to, as it highlights how much of this really goes on).

Abbey have a notoriously bad reputation for customer service.

How could they get round the telephone banking system? With Barclays you have 5 figure number from which you have to key in certain digits from to get through. I'm sure you're only allowed 3 gos (?) Do Abbey have similar?

This happened to us very recently with Abbey. Someone has used our card details to spend online to the tune of GBP3500 in one week. We live overseas so I only check our account every now and then. We suspect the card was copied at Dubai Airport while we were there in transit a few weeks ago. Not only did they clear out our account, they were also allowed to continue spending until we were over GBP700 overdrawn! We've never been overdrawn ever since we opened this account several years ago - I'd have thought this in itself would have sent some alarm bells ringing in the bank. The fraudster was also very charitable, as a couple of the transactions for over GBP200 each were to Oxfam .

Anyway, we phoned the bank who put a stop on both our cards (it was a joint account) immediately. They went through each individual transaction with us on the phone, then sent us a form for us to sign delaring that these were made fraudulently and not by us. Hopefully they'll refund us the money in the next few weeks.

They also refused to send us new cards out in the post so my husband has had to fly back to the UK to collect them. Having asked them to be sent to the Victoria branch in London, it now turns out that they've sent mine to Victoria and his to Croydon meaning that he's had to waste half a day (and a lot of money) travelling around to sort this out. Very, very annoying! If it wasn't going to be so much hassle we would change banks immediately.

I once had a transaction declined because it was 'unusual'. I had to phone and confirm my identity.

It didn't make it easy that I was trying to restrain an overexcited german shepherd dog who had undergone an ultrasound during the phonecall, because I was trying to pay a vet!

Honestly - and we thought it was a pain traveling into our nearest town! It beggars belief that a bank can be so very careless with someone else's money.

They have stopped the cards, and will send out new ones, and have been through the statement to identify which transactions are ours and which are not.

I have no doubt at all that we will change banks.

Legacy - you don't still have that email address do you?!

Tinker - there is a security system but it seems that it's quite easy to get past. It involves keying in the long number on the front of a card and then your date of birth.

Once you've got the long number and a DOB, it seems you're straight in. Abbey have noted 2 failed attempts to log in on the phone, but rather than alert the account holder, they've told the branch. Which is at the other end of the country.

The rest of the money (and because they know how much was in the account via the phone) has all been spent online.

In fairness to Abbey, we did get a recorded alert announcement phone call this morning about odd internet activity ... shame they missed the robbers under their nose though.

Our particular concern is that all of our accessible money is in the Abbey. The accounts are linked and they are all empty or overdrawn. We haven't a bean.

The bank are not even willing to provide a temporary overdraft to pay existing direct debits until we are able to get to a branch with 2 forms of ID. Let alone allow us to buy petrol or food.

It seems that now the horse has bolted, they are concerned about security ....

The woman on the phone said 'but we can't extend your overdraft because we don't know you are who you say you are, you'll have to go to the branch'.

Barking.

The police are talking rubbish. A crime has been committed - you must phone and report it and ask for a crime number.

Abbey, unfortunately are rubbish, and have a reputation for dealing very badly with this sort of thing. They will, however, insist on a crime number before they will investigate.

I know this from personal experience.

As soon as you sort it out, close your Abbey account and move to First Direct. (Actually - it is entirely up to you what you do - but that is what DS did when something similar happened to him. I am with FD and they have always been very good IME.)

the police won't act unless the bank report the crime and not the customer - and, trust me, the bank won't report it.

It's ridiculous and can only assume it's because there is too much of this sort of crime for the police to deal with.

In my case they knew the name of the guy that stole from me, where he lived, where he banked, where he worked and he would have been caught on CCTV committing the fraud and the Halifax still didn't do anything.

i'm with halifax.....fraudsters in turkey took 7p as a test from my account. i alerted halifax,who changed my cards and re-imbursed my 7p!!!

ex husband took out a capital one credit card in my name,spent £1,000 on it and admitted it to me. police said they couldn't arrest him cos cap one didn't want to waste their time and money as it was such a low ammount!it was written off,but adversely affects my credit history untill i contact all agencies to correct it

Daisy.. if they arn't willing to honour the DD's cancel them immediately.. I reckon they will try and charge you for them if you dont. Phone whoever the DD's are for and explain the sitution and just reassure you will pay as soon as.

Sounds as though the Halifax are better than the Abbey too!

If only the Abbey would act as quickly as the Halifax.

This has so many implications - credit ratings and stuff. I am also now nervous because they have our address! In reality I don't think it is a risk but the clearing out of pretty much everything we have that's accessible is quite shaking.

We will persist with the Police to get a crime number - many thanks for that bit of advice.

For once I am glad I am currently unemployed. At least I've the time to deal with all the fall from this!

And to move our bank account. Quickly.

Ds was forced to empty his bank account (Abbey) at knife point.

Abbey refused to do anything until the police had issued him with a crime number. They insisted it was his responsibility to call the police and get the crime number before they would look into it.

He had spent 6 hours in the police station making a statement, but they had omitted to give him a crime number.

After several phone calls we got the crime number and Abbey accepted that a crime had indeed been committed.

Really sorry for you have you got details and number for Ombudsman too.