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| Bad move: scammers rely on calling the telephone number on back of a bank card. Photograph: Alamy |
Santander stands accused of failing two customers who were duped by conmen to move their life savings into what they were told were new secure bank accounts – and is facing a possible legal action from one customer who has lost £80,000.
In recent months, Guardian Money has highlighted a particularly nasty scam that sees customers rung up by fraudsters who pretend to be phoning from the bank. They are first warned they've been the victim of a bank card fraud, and are then persuaded to move all their money to a new "secure" account set up by the bank – one that turns out to be the scammer's account.
Thousands of people have fallen for it – mostly because the victims are invited to call the telephone number on the back of their bank card, and therefore believe they are talking to their bank. The fraudsters rely on the UK's outdated phone system which allows the crooks to call you, and ask you to ring the bank's number. But when you dial it, the crooks have kept the line open by never putting the phone down at their end, and the call goes directly to them.
It also relies on a banking system flaw – the fact that money can be moved between UK accounts even if users put a completely different name on the transfer request.
Some older victims have lost life-changing sums – more than £100,000. However, victims are asking whether the financial regulators and banks have been negligent in not doing more to stop it going on, or to track the stolen money.
Sarah Moore was at home in February when she received a call from a man saying he was calling from Verified by Visa. He told her that her bank card was suspected of being used fraudulently. When asked which card, he said Santander, and suggested she call her bank using the number on her debit card.
Unhappy about calling the 0845 number, she used the SayNoto0870 website to find an 0800 number, heard a dial tone and the call was answered by a woman with a Scottish accent. All the time, the fraudsters had simply kept her line open. She was then subjected to a convincing tale of how her card had been used in several shops – being put on hold for several minutes at a time.
Eventually, she was told that the bank feared that the fraudster would try and make direct debit payments to a foreign account, and that she should move all her money to a secure account the bank had set up. As a result, she made several online payments to the account number and sort code she'd been given – totalling just over £80,000. In each case she put her own name in the transfer request – to what she thought was a Santander account, but was based at Lloyds.
When she rang Santander at 8am the follow morning (initially the bank's fraud department would not speak to her) it soon became clear what had happened. She says fraud staff knew all about the con, and even asked if the fraudster had a Scottish accent. As with previous cases, Santander has refused to refund her saying that she voluntarily handed her money over.
In an almost carbon copy case in January, Phillip Clark from Bath lost £20,000. He realised very quickly he had been conned and rang Santander 15 minutes after making the transfer to halt it. Despite this, the bank did not contact Barclays – host of the fraudulent account – for a further 12 hours, by which time all but £6,000 had gone.
Both he and Moore feel that Santander failed in its duty of care, and Moore is considering legal action to retrieve her money.
Clark took his cases to the Financial Ombudsman (FO) but it sided with Santander having decided the 12-hour delay was not a factor in him losing the cash. He is now bringing a second case against Barclays. The FO is still looking at Moore's case. * Names have been changed.
SOURCE: www.theguardian.com
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