legal advice/opinions on chances of legal action after being scammed. Bank refusing to help.

[cowbuoyed]

DH was scammed out of 4.6k in his business account. I can't believe he fell for it, but he was woken up by someone very persuasive, claiming to be from his bank, at 8 am on a Saturday morning. I was still asleep otherwise I would have told him to exert caution. This person knew recent transactions and his bank details. The person told him he had to act quickly to prevent a fraudulent transaction and take him through a process which seems to have actually been dh using the 3DS security steps to allow a payment. As soon as this was dine the caller hung up and DH saw the funds leave his account. He messaged his bank, Revolut, immediately (no number for them) and explained what had happened. The payment was taken in AED (Dubai currency) and he told them it was a scam and to stop the payment. They did not. We have been through the ombudsman process and they have sided with the bank saying no evidence of fraudulent actively as DH went through the 3DS security step (he pressed one button which he thought was stopping the payment - stupid I know, but he was under duress and panicked by the caller) We have now paid 200 quid to take it to the small claims court but not hopeful when the ombudsman have sided wit th bank and basically repeated what they said. Are there any other legal strategies available to us? Anyone have any similar experiences or advice? Bit desperate as that is a lot of money to us and meant that month was extremely hard, and still behind on some payments as a result of it.

What is 3DS? Are you in the UK?

When did it happen?

Might be relevant because Revolut only became a bank in March.

That said, your husband went through 3DS and there wasn’t a technical failure by Revolut. I’m not surprised the ombudsman sided with them.

I wouldn’t say Revolut failed in their duty of care. Do you suspect Revolut have shaky data protection procedures that allowed them to access your husbands transactions?

yes we are in the UK. 3DS is a verification step to authenticate payment. DH thought he was doing it to prevent a fraudulent transaction.

We contacted Revolut immediately after the call. They refused to act. I think they could have done something about the bank account that the money was sent to - or the Dubai umbrella organisation supplying goods (no idea what kind of goods, we couldnt' find out) that the money was paid to. And yes I do think they must have had shaky data protection procedures that allowed them to access my dh's transactions - they had detailed information that my dh did not provide to them.

I am not sure you can blame revolut necessarily for the recent transactions access. There are a number of ways that this could have been done, email hacks being an obvious one.
Revolut, and any bank, will have limited jurisdiction over a bank in UAE and once the funds have left that makes it very tricky to stop it. I am sorry OP.

I am not sure email hacks would have allowed them to see recent transactions and card details. That must have been a security breach from the bank's details. And the ombudsman has sided, or at least partially sided, with customers in similar positions who have been scammed. I've been doing a bit of research.

Email is the way my accounts were hacked. Once they're in your email they can get into everything.

I think, probably it was originally done because a company I'd bought from had a data breach and I (very stupidly) was using the same password for shopping accounts and email.

I work in cyber. There hasn't been a mass compromise against Revolut AFAIK. So this means the scammer has compromised your individual details. This can be via email confirmations or reuse of passwords or a stolen old phone where the apple or Google wallet hasn't been deactivated.

Whether or not Revolut are to blame I cannot say. Generally the ombudsman sides with customers for APP scams unless they've been grossly negligent. If the ombudsman has not found in your favour then I am so sorry OP but I think you are going to struggle. Your best recourse may be press attention

I really was shocked the ombudsman did not find in our favour. Dh was clearly a victim of a scam and clearly under duress and the belief he was protecting his funds when he was guided through it. The ombudsman basically repeated everything the bank had said.

still not sure how they'd see his recent transactions via his email. Maybe I am missing something.

I am still trying to get my head around how they did it. They had already tried to make the payment and just needed him to do the 3DS authentication (which they told him was to stop the fraudulent payment and he had just woken up and they were very urgent) did they clone his card?

A bank will never call you to do any action to stop a fraudulent transaction.
They will decline it.
Then you have to prove it is a legit transaction to get it to go through.

Yes your husband was scammed but honestly, he should have told the so called bank calling no I didn’t authorise the payment bye bye and hung up.

The fraudsters are very persuasive, and part of their trickery is to stress the urgency and keep talking to keep you involved, so you have no time to think about what is going on or to step back and ask yourself whether this is a legitimate conversation. I appreciate that it doesn't feel like it now, but you are both very lucky that they didn't get more money.

They will put a false screen (like a screensaver) on a PC/phone so the user thinks they've checked their account and logged out but the hackers have kept the account open in the background with full access to set up payments etc hence just needing the authorisation. I'm afraid people don't expect their phones to be hacked like this now, but they can be, or spyware can be inadvertently installed. Then, with touch payments, there's often a transaction history on the phone, i.e. they don't need access to the online banking initially to be able to talk about how much has been spent, where and when.

I'm afraid I'm not aware of anywhere else for you to go. Revolut has only recently been recognised as a bank in the UK; until then, there was no protection for funds held with them.

Because you get email confirmation for transactions done online especially but also retailers now often send emails when purchasing in store. If he'd just woken up all they needed was one or two recent transactions which he recognised.

Entirely possible. You can buy on the dark web ( for really not much money ) lists with 1000s of valid credit card details. You can buy card details matched to matched to phone numbers.
I am afraid the scammers are professionally organised criminal gangs who are using every tool in the box to defraud you of your money. These are not 1 man band operations but large gangs who have access to a lot of tech.

Some scammers are very good at making you think they’ve told you recent transactions when in fact you’ve told them (a bit like fake clairvoyants). If your husband had just woken up and was panicking it may be something like that (or maybe not, of course).

You could try one of the journalists who help people with this sort of thing- Crane on the Case or Times Your Money Matters. They can sometimes persuade banks to give a refund ex gratia.