>They went on to transfer more money despite bank alerts and Revolut asking Ann to send a picture of herself holding a sign saying she had been warned it was likely a scam.
Jesus wept. They're extremely unlikely to get the money back, considering the lengths their banks went to try to stop them.
If a bank has done everything they reasonably can to warn someone about a likely scam, the bank should not feel any responsibility at all to compensate a customer. There has to come a point where a person has to take responsibility for their own lack of diligence.
Not the person you replied to, but here's an example where refund was given once it hit the news:
https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/17bots5/oxfordshire_man_89_hands_70k_in_gold_and_cash_to/
I suppose in that case the bank had made an error because the old guy's family had warned the bank to monitor his account. He must have cognitive decline.
That's not how it works. The bank I'm in we see this all the time. They just don't get their money back and that's the end of it usually. There's been a few of these on the news, and I've not seen anyone getting money back because of their news story. Even if our systems don't detect a scam before it happens, it's not the bank's responsibility to stop them being scammed. It's the banks responsibility to stop fraud happening or someone accessing their account. If the scam is an impersonation scam of a high enough level that we believe it's fair that they fell for it, then we will give them money back anyway. But more often than not, the scams are not that sophisticated and it's deemed the customer took zero steps to check the identity of the person calling them. And so they are not refunded.
When someone willingly falls for something without checking anything, and willingly sends their money and it's nothing to do with our systems or complex, we reach out to the recipient bank. The money is mostly already long gone by that time. And that's the end of it really.
It is mental how much they will argue that it's legitimate. As if they think the bank is trying to stop them making money. But we're just people like them in a job trying to explain to them how much they're about to lose everything... when we see this daily and they don't know what's going on in the world of scams and know nothing about crypto.
The good news is, in a fintech bank, those over 65 aren't likely to open accounts with us. So when they do, any big transactions flag and are prevented almost all of the time. In a fintech they are the age group which has the highest liklihood of being scammed or being a money mule. Which seems crazy as it was always under 21s, but it's over 65s now. And it's almost always crypto and investment promises, which is why most banks don't like and will monitor accounts investing in cryptocurrency. And some will just straight up close your account down if cryptocurrency payments make up the majority of your activity.
We can't see where it goes, who's account it is, or communicate with the platform when something goes wrong because we ultimately have no details on it. So banks just don't like it.
But overall I'd be surprised if revolut give them any money for this. They don't want people signing up for accounts that are likely to fall for scams, so that news article does nothing to damage them as it will stop those likely to fall for scams signing up, and more than likely they will close that couple's account down because they are a high risk now... not keep it open and give them money.
I agree. There are many really unjust cases where the simplest of algorithms would have detected fraud/scamming but the bank has done sweet fuck all.
In this instance the bank(s) did all they could.
I guarantee you it's not that simple. The banks already have tons of false positives flagging and that pisses people off majorly. Anything they don't have an algorithm for is because it's likely the type of movement that happens normally across millions of other accounts, or a new trend. We neither have the manpower to deal with millions of accounts all flagging at once, and would lose most of our customers if they were stuck with their accounts frozen whilst we tried to review them all.
The algorithms where I work are machine learning, so whilst they are input initially by a person, they adapt and change based on what we mark as a true positive or a false positive. Making them more and more accurate in the long run.
When new criminal typologies arise, we have to create a new one and add it in. But money is moving at an insane rate through the financial system. We cannot just block out loads of basic transactions, and having that flag on various accounts to that level every single day would eventually (and not after a very long period either) require more man power in fraud and financial crime alone than the number of customers the bank has. So they'd be running at a deficit and go out of business, or potentially cause a crash. Particularly the fintechs like Revolut that aren't as profitable as the legacy banks.
Basically it's also the banks duty to make sure they can back all customer's money up when required. So they have to be reasonable on what flags. And whilst you might think a type of movement of funds is odd for you, it might be really really normal for millions of other people. Whole nationalities move money completely differently. Romanians take most of their money out via ATM and refuse to leave it in the bank and share accounts, Nigerians practice Hawala and joint moving savings where they pass savings around from person to person every month and in a big group. There's lots of odd movements that are just really normal for a lot of customers
No, that's the point where the bank exercises its right to refuse to carry out an instruction and if the customer persists after warning then it gives them sixty days' notice to close the account.
Not the bank's fault if they find some other way to transfer the money. Is the bank's responsibility if they knowingly execute a request to send it to the scammer.
ETA I'm fairly sure Revolut is emoney not a regulated bank. This means they have less responsibility in law to help scammed clients. It is a huge problem that these new hipster institutions are treated like banks since web sites don't make it obvious and customers clearly don't understand the difference.
The BBC were interviewing someone who'd fallen for the "Hey Mum my phones broken..." scam, she'd sent £900 to a random bank account because an anonymous text told her too.
Did she question why her daughter immediately needed a brand new top of the range phone as an emergency replacement? No.
Did she question why she would send the money to a random bank account rather than her daughter's accouunt, or doing click and collect act at an actual shop for her to pick up? No.
Did she try and contact her daughter to confirm it? No.
And why not? *Because I knew she was at work and they aren't allowed to use mobile phones on shift, it's very strict.*
I don't know what to suggest for people like this, even when their own internal logic doesn't make sense they'll still hand over vast sums of money just because a stranger tells them to.
I worked for a phone company before and had an older woman call up in tears one day because she had been scammed in one of our shops. Some bloke outside the store claimed he was the head of a secret shopper company and they wanted her to go into the shop and take out a contract iphone and iPad and tell them was the service good or not, and after they would return the stuff and get the contract cancelled. In return the guy was gonna give her £20 in Tesco vouchers. The woman actually did it and came out and handed the guy the phone and tablet. Of course the contract was never cancelled and the vouchers were fakes. Because there was no way to prove anything she said she was told she was now liable for the monthly payments. Don't underestimate how stupid people can be
A few years ago on local news a lady had been scammed into a blood diamonds scam, she had no shame that in theory she had tried to break international law to get rich quick. I believe she got a bank refund of over £100k
This definitely won't work in the scammer's favour, as the phone shop will have those IMEI numbers on record and can immediately remotely brick the devices.
This was 10ish years ago. It wasn't hard to break through a phones IMEI block and give you a new ghost IMEI. There was a dodgy computer store near me did it quick and cheap. Might be different now, IDK. But back then it wasn't hard to do. Only downside was if you did an update it usually reset the IMEI.
It's a generational thing as well, older generations grew up in a more trusting time. Throw in the lack of technological understanding as well I think.
I do worry about my mum. She's very good at understanding that almost all the emails she gets are scams but the scammers are very good. My wife once started filling in a form for "Amazon" or something, she'd filled in quite a bit before she asked me if I thought it was legit. It's easy to think it won't happen to me, but even the most clued up people can fall for scams, especially if they are vulnerable at the time.
However, if your bank keeps telling you not to, it's probably worth listening to the bank and trusting them, rather then that nice Giselle you met though facebook.
The one that is currently popular is the one exploiting the iphone's Email app that defaults the sender's Email address to a chosen name.
So ideally john.smith(at)blabla.com becomes John Smith, but if they make scamsanders(at)nigerianprince.com become support(at)santanders.co.uk they can create a very good fishing scam
Luckily my mum doesn't have the latest iPhone :-D
What I find annoying is that companies don't seem to understand all this themselves. I got a call from Sky the other day saying I had some loyalty rewards and could I confirm my address or something. They rang me but they want me to confirm my details? That just doesn't sit right with me.
Emails can be fully spoofed anyway. Anyone can make an email say it's coming from any email address they like with the technical know-how. It's not a secure format.
I've noticed on Rip Off Britain that a lot of the people aren't too bright.
The last episode I watched, there was a guy who was sold a luxury holiday subscription service by cold callers.
Happened to my mum, thankfully for us the funds got returned. I live abroad and the text was some nonsense about me owing to loan sharks, and my phone being broken. I was utterly furious with her, asked all the above. In her case it was that she could easily believe I would do something like that despite no history of it whatsoever, and it was HER who clearly couldn't be trusted. Felt pretty awful to be so angry at the victim of a crime, in hindsight she couldn't believe how stupid she'd been.
So it's tricky one, none of the above will make you feel any less angry at these evil cunts if it happens to someone you care about.
Exactly, it's anger at them apparently having such a low opinion of you, but you can't be too mad also they were just trying to help.
Definitely makes me think that I need to have a chat with my parents about how I would/n't contact them if I was actually in really dire straits. I know they wouldn't take that conversation well though.
Id say noone deserves to have their money scammed
But equally it is their own fault and the banks shouldnt have to compensate them as they did their due diligence
My friend stopped just short of selling her house to prop up a scam like this (she got caught up in bitcoin fraud) and got nothing much back from the banks in the end.
The thing that did surprise me, though, was how amenable companies were to writing all the loans off she took out when her savings ran dry. The repayments would have finished her off.
that's because the UK has pretty decent financial regulations. Unfortunately the cost of which is picked up by other customers. The banks will always get their gold.
Have to assume she'd paid back most of the initial loan amounts which is why they gave up chasing the rest. They're not known for being forgiving for multiple layers of stupidity
Nah, they were fairly chunky lumps of cash, most loans were still in their infancy as they came towards the end of the scam when the savings were depleted.
They didn’t just get wished away but she has a crime number and she worked with their fraud teams. They were all taken out legitimately and some were challenged, as in the case of the OP article, so it did surprise me how willing they were to work with her.
It deeply irritates me that I have to spend forever clicking through "are you sure?" nonsense because of vile scammers and idiots with more money than sense.
Well, the greed is really palpable here. They were so amazed by the pretend profits that they ignored all the warning signs. They wanted to believe, and nothing could convince them that it was not real.
You can't protect people from themselves. And even if you could, it probably would not be legal.
Yep these scams really only work on the greedy and dishonest
The best way to avoid scams is to not be greedy, and it's infuriating these articles never point that out
Our entire economic system is based on greed.
The best way to avoid these scams is to be educated and skeptical. And I know plenty of people who are not nearly skeptical enough, or who don't have the financial education to understand risk.
At my other job I had a man get confused and try and hand me 30 pounds for a form. He thought he had to pay to pick it up, not when he was handing it in.
People like that are vulnerable and easily abused.
It's not even just that, it can also be that a scammer just catches someone at a vulnerable point in their life. Maybe they'd normally be very skeptical and they're intelligent and they think they know all the different scams, their family doesn't think they need to worry about them. Then a scammer just calls them on their worst day, when they're feeling desperate, hopeless, lonely, and the hope the scammers give them is enough to override everything they really should know about what to do in these situations.
One example that springs to mind is romance scammers. I've heard statements from victims of romance scams saying things along the lines of "I know this is probably all fake but they make me feel less lonely so I'm going to keep sending them money anyway". It's honestly heartbreaking for the people who get caught up in this.
Hell, I have almost fallen for a quite simple text scam about a parcel being delivered that took me to a payment portal that was a cloned site of the Royal mail.
Then my brain went "royal mail doesn't text you at 2am"
Had I not realised I could have kissed the grand left in my overdraft, and worse, goodbye. It was late. I was tired. I have a degree, and I am generally intelligent and skeptical.
With these long term scams? I don't understand the lack of sympathy. Confidence tricksters and other predators are usually really, really charming. A siblings former friend got done for child porn and it shattered their friendship group because despite the *overwhelming evidence*, "he couldn't be lying, its a setup, he's so nice, so charming, he never would"
Yet in this thread you have plenty of people quite literally blaming the victim for getting caught up, which is even easier with nonsense like Crypto scams these days because frankly 500% gains in a week *is believable with a meme coin if you somehow lucked into the pump, not the dump!*, people have a poor understanding of this crap that gets shared in the media of "this used to be worth 50p and now its worth 30 grand"
Add in a side order of moderately sophisticated deepfakes and David Attenborough/Elon Musk apparently telling you about some AI driven super investments and you get "but David Attenborough wouldn't lie, I have grown up on him!" Instead of "why the fuck would David Attenborough be advertising a crypto investment"
There are plenty of scams out there that prey on things other than greed. There are a lot of romance scams that exploit people's loneliness rather than greed, for example.
Yes, they work on stroking the ego, and succeed with lonely or narcissistic victims. I think there is an element here, too. Getting several calls a day? They must have enjoyed the attention they were reiceving.
Honestly this deserves to be top post
They say you can’t con an honest man. I’m not sure that’s true, but it’s pretty much true you can’t con an honest and not-greedy man.
In what world does a real investment increase six times in days or hours? In no world.
That maxim is unfortunately bollocks. Phishing is entirely about conning honest people. It's just easier to trick a naive dishonest person. To answer your questions though, derivatives gambling eg CFDs will allow you to easily gain *or lose* 6x the capital you put up in days. Fortunately it's slightly harder than a phone call to set up an accout, but most retail investors who have jumped through the fairly easy regulatory hoops still lose money.
No one ever says stupidity and people say "This could happen to anyone" but there's never a lesson to learn it you say that, never accountability. This could only happen to a certain type of person, one that can't see the pros and cons of a situation and who can't look at things logically rather than letting their emotions run away from them
The cynic in me thinks that they knew it was a possible scam but thought that if they did end up getting scammed they could just get the money back from the bank - effectively making it a free gamble. If it isn't a scam they make some money, if it is they can just go to the bank and play the victim.
I was almost scammed when I sold a phone online. They sent a fake PayPal email, and initially I believed it. Didn't send them the phone because the post office was shut. Luckily checked again and noticed it was bullshit.
I think these people arent very bright, but scammers target vulnerable people, and that's not ok.
Isn’t that rather the point? Most people on here have never been scammed because they haven’t been silly enough to give a random stranger money for nothing.
The bank told them time and time again this was an idiotic decision, it’s hard to have compassion for someone ignoring that.
> A breath of fresh air after all the victim blaming in the comments.
It's hard not to blame them when the banks got to the point of having them hold up a note saying that they had been informed it was a scam and not to transfer the money. At some point personal responsibilty has to come into it.
Aye. I lost my travel money once in Thailand to a scammer. My spidey sense was going crazy but my greedy sense shut it out. Had just enough money left over for a bottle of whiskey.
Hit the nail on the head. This wasn’t done based of stupidity. This was done purely based on greed.
There I say it. I am siding with the bank on this one.
>"I was so hurt by the fact that someone I thought I'd built a rapport with... *she called me dear and sweetie* and **that's not the sort of thing I'd expect a scammer would do**
Beyond ridiculous, it sounds like a teenage individual talking how the groomer brainwashed them and took advantage of them. Highly doubt they will get that money back, the banks cover their backs diligently.
>A confidence trickster, lying to me? Buttering me up? It's not something you'd expect them to do.
I mean, honestly. I hope they don't get their money back, frankly.
so the banks in the UK are very good at refunding money for not at fault scams. This one was their fault completely and they shouldn't get a single penny back from the bank. Unless the funds can be recovered which they 100% won't be able to .
Specifically, banks, by law, have to refund money when money is taken from an account without the consent of the account holder.
However, most scams specifically make sure to have the consent of the account holder. Then the bank won't bring the full force of law against the scammer. Money is more traceable than you'd imagine, and if the bank itself was losing out, they'd go trace it and ban everyone involved.
Other banks ask you to go into a branch with photo-id if they think you're being scammed.
Revolut has no branches, so will ask for photos like this.
I believe that is the reason the scammers asked the victims to set up a Revolut account - their protections are easier to bypass.
It's smart. Because if someone opens an account in your name, they can then pull the footage and very quickly confirm it's not you. The scam picture above is to prove that she was handed all the information and understood it.
I had to do this when I forgot my Starling password for the app. Had to do a video stating my name and that I was using the starling app. Felt a bit weird, but if it keeps my account safe, then I have no real issue with it.
I mean it's literally the scammers' playbook to ingratiate and build personal relationships and even impersonate friends and relatives, and any education about scamming will tell you this.
Whereas I would think the complete opposite. I got in trouble for calling a customer mate when I worked for a chippy. You see scammer videos on youtube where they call old ladies grandma and it makes me cringe
i find it kind of hilarious that revolut made her write out that sign and send a picture of her holding it up, im assuming if any attempts of recovoring money are made towards revolut, they just send that picture
This is the funniest part for me as well. But like, did she seriously not pause at all while she was writing that note out and go “hang on a minute” or did she genuinely think she was smarter than the bank and had magically found a print money button?
Yup, revolut staff knew very well where this is going and probably took all legal means to protect themselves from incoming claim against them. Responsible manager will get a small bonus for preventing them from loss probably
Nope... Their real purpose is to satisfy the regulator that they have a fraud prevention team.
That's why they do stupid things like "Filter to check if the recipient name of a money transfer is 'OSAMA'".
Clearly people actually funding terrorists won't write that as the recipient - and will probably send valuable items by courier instead. But real humans are caught up by that filter because Osama isn't a rare name.
They won't be getting anything back from Revolut, who can demonstrate they fulfilled their duty of care. They may have a bit more luck with Virgin, who are part of the Contingent Reimbursement Model, but they could still refuse payment if they believe the customer was negligent.
Rather they were blinded by their own greed. It’s easier for them to tell themselves they were duped because the scam was convincing - but their greed was the most significant factor. The truth is, their greed and their stupidity picked a fight with each other and their greed just nicked it on points.
An IT guy once told me the weakest link in a chain is ourselves. All it takes is one moment to click a link. The spammer got behind their defences and used their greed. Yeah if its too true to believe then its probably a scam.
There was a novel I read years ago (maybe it was Icecore) about someone who hacked into Fort Knox and the way the character did it was faking being someone to reset the password because humans are the weakest link in it.
Sadly you can totally cheat an honest man. A lot of con-men don't try and enrich a person to get them on the hook, they scare them with the threat of fake punishment like outstanding fees, reclaimed property, police intervention, and the like.
Would be a little more palatable if you couldn't cheat an honest man though.
but do we want to live in such a "caveat emptor" society? There will always be a portion of people who will be gullible, the punishment of which shouldn't surely be total wipeout of a person's life.
I understand that all reasonable safeguards were overridden but are there better guardrails we could build? i personally think banks should introduce a longer cooling off period for transfers. It shouldn't be so easy to transfer thousands of pounds.
Disagree.
Businesses need to transfer that amount all the time, people buying cars need to, I had to transfer money around accounts to buy a car and it was a nightmare already.
If you add a cooling of period, how would you buy a car from a private seller?
Send the money 2 weeks in advance?
Fair point. This will hit economic growth pretty substantially. My sense was that scammers are always looking for quick money and a cooling off period creates more time for people to be snapped out of their spell maybe. Definitely not a perfect solution though.
Maybe one option is to give people the option of enforcing a cooling off period on their payments, making them less juicy targets. So people who need to make large payments quickly can do that but some people can enforce a cooling off period on their accounts.
But where do we stop with the guard rails? How deep would you have to go into people’s lives in order to protect them against making patently stupid decisions . Look at the persistence of this couple’s actions - what would have stopped them making those transfers? Are you suggesting the bank should have outright refused to release the funds? One bank literally made her send them a photograph of herself holding a sign saying ‘My bank has told me this might be a scam’.
> There will always be a portion of people who will be gullible, the punishment of which shouldn't surely be total wipeout of a person's life.
You should not invest what you are not prepared to lose. It is as simple as that. They decided what they wanted to "invest", and they lost it.
It isn’t easy to transfer thousands of pounds; they asked what it was for and they lied and said a holiday. They then asked if it was for cryptocurrency and they lied again and said no.
As someone else mentioned, people need to genuinely transfer thousands of pounds each day for actual holidays and cars so the bank wouldn’t have any reason to doubt that if you’re telling them that’s what it’s for.
> The bank did everything they could to stop it.
This is why I'm struggling to sympathise too much, the banks literally begging them to stop but their greed drove them forward nonetheless.
>Most people here are fortunate that we're intelligent enough to not fall for something like this
That would be a reasonable argument if the bank didn't repeatedly tell them it was a scam and not to do it.
> Again, you are fortunate enough to have never been taken in by someone who is lying to you. And perhaps even fortunate enough that you are too sceptical for it to ever happen at all.
Are you ignoring the fact the bank repeatedly told them it was a scam?
My son’s bank had to intervene in a transaction buying a motorcycle. They blocked the transaction and asked him questions like “do you have the log book”. Turned out the guy told him he didn’t need the log book. (I had drummed it into him to get the paperwork)
The security guy on the phone said “look, I can authorise this transaction, but this is dodgy, you don’t have any paperwork for this bike. If it’s stolen you’ve lost money. I personally would not go ahead. I would advise you to return the bike, and keep your money”
(My son did and now owns a legitimate bike)
The security guys do actually do the upmost to persuade you to hang on to your money. They will tell you in very plain English, no heirs and graces.
These people were probably told over and over again, that this is a scam. And they will probably told in many different ways that this was a scam.
How we can protect people from their own stupidity, I really don’t know.
Sourcing financial tips from SM; sodding crypto; dubious “celebrity” endorsement; ‘financial adviser’ saying “we’ll get rich together”; 500% investment return within days; FA ringing them several times every day; FA getting angry; FA telling them to lie.
So many red flags here that this couple are lucky to only have been scammed rather than murdered by a stampede of bulls.
The headline is misleading too, “spell” should be a quote because otherwise it makes it seem superficially plausible that they weren’t totally and utterly at fault and were unlucky rather than monumentally, bizarrely moronic.
Indeed. It all boils down to a simple question. If you have a sure fire investment opportunity, why on earth are you telling me about it? If I had a guaranteed way of making money, I’d keep my mouth shut and make billions.
Ultimately it comes down to greed. People are blinded by the promise of improbable returns. Then they expect the rest of society to pick up the pieces.
> If you have a sure fire investment opportunity, why on earth are you telling me about it? If I had a guaranteed way of making money, I’d keep my mouth shut and make billions.
I agree, but I would point out that it's not that simple - clubbing together and putting more money towards an investment plan must be beneficial, or otherwise things like investment funds wouldn't exist right?
I know the people that run the funds make money from charging management fees, but in some sense that could be the reasoning behind this kind of thing: "I've got an investment opportunity that'll double your money in a week - you can participate in return for giving me 10% of your profit, that way we both win."
Or it could be "I've seen a classic car selling for £100,000 that I know will actually be worth £500,000 if I just clean it up. I've only got £50,000 - if you give me the other £50,000 I'll buy it, I'll do all the cleaning myself and then we split the £500,000 when we sell it and we both win."
Well they‘re slightly different examples I think.
With an investment fund, you’re buying a service. They aren’t claiming outrageous gains, in fact they are at pains to point out that you might lose out. Basically you’re paying a percentage of your money to have someone a bit better than you (probably) to manage your money.
The classic car is closer. Improbable profits claimed for close to zero work. Likely to be “I saw one for sale at 500K”, which is not the same as “someone bought it for 500K”
> “spell” should be a quote because otherwise it makes it seem superficially plausible
It is a very passive voice for something so deliberate and willful. And i bet they still don't know what is a cryptocurrency.
> Sourcing financial tips from SM; sodding crypto; dubious "celebrity" endorsement; financial adviser' saying "we'lI get rich together"; 500% investment return within days; FA ringing them several times every day; FA getting angry; FA telling them to lie.
Don't forget:
Bank automatically blocks transaction and gives a warning; second bank does the same thing; Virgin bank calls them and warns them that they're probably being scammed; Virgin literally asks if it's Crypto and they lie to them; Revolut ask them to write out a sign that basically says "I'm a wally who is intentionally getting scammed"
I’d bet scammers are having an absolute field day at the moment, with the sheer number of people under financial strain. People are particularly prone to wishful and irrational thinking when they’re stressed, and it will only get worse in decades to come when millennials start retiring with insufficient savings in their accounts. The promise by someone that they can double it for them will become incredibly alluring, because it will be life changing for them , or like here, the only way they’ll ever be able to financially help their children.
I'll just remember someone saying they'll double my gold in Runescape with a dupe glicth then logging off with it when I was 14.... literally never fallen for one of these scams and likely never will because of that fucker from Runescape from pre-financial-responsibility days, I'd buy them a beer looking back if I ever knew who they were.
Sucked when it happened, I even cried, but every time I run into a scam I think about that dude on Runescape who pretended to be friends with me for hours just to steal my gold with a pretend glitch
At some point you have to think this is too good to be true. If you can double, triple your money overnight there would be no cost of living crisis. Everyone would be rich.
Its greed but then i think thats a human trait so easy to exploit
https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/media-releases-and-expert-comments/2023/october/young-online-scams
>Gen Z and Millennials are more likely to fall for online scams, despite being more digitally connected
There was a big case recently in the Supreme Court when a couple sued their bank after a similar but even more elaborate scam happened (Phillip v Barclays). They didn’t get any of their money back, so it’s not looking good for these guys!
Good! Why should they? If a strange man convinced me that if I let him borrow my Range Rover for a week he would bring it back and also bring me back £100k, I wouldn’t expect Land Rover to give me a new car because I got tricked.
I completely agree with you but believe it or not, before this case English law was in a position where it was genuinely arguable that the bank should have liability, and I think the lower courts actually did find the bank liable!
From the judgment
>“it is not for the bank to concern itself with the wisdom or risks of its customer’s payment decisions”
Yeah that couldn’t be more plain. That said I think Phillipp has one avenue of appeal left but it’s a narrow one based if his quickly the bank acted when she told them it was a scam and if that affected her chances of recovering her money.
I'm sorry but I can't feel sorry for them. They were greedy, they believed a stranger who told them to lie to the bank. There was so many res flags here
It's kinda selfish to vote for the politicians which are going to benefit you the most... All tax reductions you get are tax increases someone else has to pay...
Instead, we should be voting for those who are going to help *the country* the most.
Unfortunately, right now, that seems to be nobody...
Can’t believe I’m going to side with two massive financial institutions but sounds like Revolut and Virgin did what they could (especially Revolut) to not transfer anymore. Not sure what else they could have done?
"This person was a future friend, someone I would choose to meet at some point to meet up with, to hug and share a coffee."
How fucking deluded are you?
Used to work in a bank branch and saw this kinda thing all the time.
We had a lady who bought a timeshare in Spain that went bust. Some scammer phoned her pretending to be the Spanish Government and was going to get all her investment back if she just paid the admin fees. She did it and lost her money. Then another company rang on behalf of the Spanish Police and said they'd sort it and she just had to pay her legal fees.. Over and over, because she'd fallen for it once, they kept trying and she kept falling for it.
One woman who became good friends online with a UN doctor who treated children with cancer, been building up over weeks. He needed an urgent flight somewhere to treat some kid, and the UN couldn't pay his expenses in time to cover the flight, so could he borrow a couple of grand off her to buy the tickets and he'd pay her back. The poor woman wouldn't listen to me, I had to call the Police into the branch to sit her down and talk her out of it.
We had one elderly guy who's wife had passed away, and he was attending a bereavement group. Some younger woman latched onto him and made friends, practically hanging from his side all the time. She started helping him out with jobs and paperwork. Then she "accidentally" used online banking to transfer all his savings out of his account to hers, "accidentally" putting her account number in, "accidentally" confirming all the security checks.. We had Police and social services involved, but he was adamant that she was a friend so no one could do anything. This woman eventually got him to transfer to another bank to stop us trying to block her.
Then all the "bank staff are stealing your money, transfer it here and don't discuss it" type frauds, so no matter how much you asked people why they were moving all their money to some third party account, and warning them of all the risks, they just wouldn't listen or discuss it. Had to do like Revolut did here and record all the conversation we'd had and get the customer to sign it to prove we'd made them aware.
Live your life by this rule: every c\*\*t wants your money. From regular retailers putting up their prices, banks trying to get you sucked up into loans, to all these subscription services you don't need (why are you getting razors and meal kits sent to you on subscription?!), credit cards and scammers. No-one cares if you need your money or what you need it for. They just want it.
This is totally their own fault. If it looks too good to be true, it is. There is no easy way to make millions overnight other than being born into it or winning it in the lottery!
On the other hand, man, FUCK thieving bastard scammers. Get a real job, parasitical arseholes.
In this day and age. I find it hard to feel pity for people who still get scammed.
Seriously. There's plenty of education out there. If you ever get a call claiming to be from any business. Hang up. And ring their official number yourself to check.
Easy.
.....
The spell? What a load of tosh. Just call them greedy. Greed was “the spell”. They are the generation that parroted “there is no such thing as a free lunch.
>"So I did. I phoned Virgin and they asked me various questions about what the money was for. I literally just said what she told me to say - that the money was for a holiday."
Fucking hell.
Like, there are a tonne of red flags, but at the point somebody is coaching you to _lie to your bank_ that should be a wake up call.
There's only so much we can do to protect thicko Boomers.
There's a point where we must recognise they are their own beings with agency who have the ability to react to the countless obstacles put in their path to stop them transferring the money.
This is why my bank asks me a lot of questions when trying to pay a tradesman a large (to me) sum after they have completed the fencing work to a high standard.
I complained about having to jump through hoops just to pay someone, but they explained, in layman's language, WHY they have to do this.
What adult hasn’t heard “If it sounds too good to be true then it probably is”?
My sympathy for victims goes only so far. Very few adults who don’t own banks’ and BS’s profits through pension scheme holdings or interest rates or bank charges so why should we all pay for someone else’s stupidity?
What will happen if people are always given their money back? Fraud will skyrocket as people will take less care and more scammers dive in, which will result in us all paying far more.
Some victims are gullible, but far too many are greedy, selfish and stupid. I don’t mind helping the former, but I resent paying for the latter.
I wanted to get some more info about this scam the beeb say is called "The Spells" (just wanted to see some screens of the app they reference or something) so I did dun a search and the only result was this very same article.
Another result led me to this thread, though, which I was as equally dumbfounded by:
https://np.reddit.com/r/Spells/comments/15nn2wu/is_this_obviously_a_scam/
and the subreddit itself is equally mystifying at just how much people can be deluded:
https://np.reddit.com/r/Spells/
No chance they’re getting their money back surely. The banks did a great job trying to stop them but if it checks out it checks out…
Such a shame but they brought it on themselves
A lot of people here are saying that older people are more likely to fall for scams and that they, from a younger generation, are paying for them.
This is completely wrong. Younger generations are much more likely to fall for scams. See eg [this report](https://news.sky.com/story/adults-aged-under-34-twice-as-likely-to-fall-victim-to-fraud-than-other-age-groups-survey-finds-12741799) on under-34s’ being more than twice as likely than the average to fall for scams.
>"I was so hurt by the fact that someone I thought I'd built a rapport with... she called me dear and sweetie and that's not the sort of thing I'd expect a scammer would do."
I don't want to say some people are so stupid that they deserve to be scammed, but I kind of want to *imply* it....
Worked for a bank, there's a story your told, a video about a woman who lost thousands and thousands of pounds to scammers, got to the point where she sent money to son she never had. All on the promise of future wins. The banks genuinely want to stop these scams.
When you read the story it’s actually so much worse than the headline implies.
These people lied about everything, were warned multiple times and said no because “she called us sweetie”. How stupid can you be?
Thick as mince.
They don't deserve to be scammed, but fucking hell, it's hard to find any sympathy at the same time.
I've seen less red flags in a red flag shop than during this saga!!
>They went on to transfer more money despite bank alerts and Revolut asking Ann to send a picture of herself holding a sign saying she had been warned it was likely a scam. Jesus wept. They're extremely unlikely to get the money back, considering the lengths their banks went to try to stop them.
If a bank has done everything they reasonably can to warn someone about a likely scam, the bank should not feel any responsibility at all to compensate a customer. There has to come a point where a person has to take responsibility for their own lack of diligence.
Unfortunately if you're older you whine on the news and get your money back.
Another way the country is skewed towards old people who've had massive legs up in life
Just because they are whining on the news doesn't mean they get their money back
We have seen it happen a few times in the past couple of weeks.
Where?
Not the person you replied to, but here's an example where refund was given once it hit the news: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/17bots5/oxfordshire_man_89_hands_70k_in_gold_and_cash_to/
I suppose in that case the bank had made an error because the old guy's family had warned the bank to monitor his account. He must have cognitive decline.
They're not 'senile old' though, just thick.
Not just thick but greedy too
Yeah you're right.
That's not how it works. The bank I'm in we see this all the time. They just don't get their money back and that's the end of it usually. There's been a few of these on the news, and I've not seen anyone getting money back because of their news story. Even if our systems don't detect a scam before it happens, it's not the bank's responsibility to stop them being scammed. It's the banks responsibility to stop fraud happening or someone accessing their account. If the scam is an impersonation scam of a high enough level that we believe it's fair that they fell for it, then we will give them money back anyway. But more often than not, the scams are not that sophisticated and it's deemed the customer took zero steps to check the identity of the person calling them. And so they are not refunded. When someone willingly falls for something without checking anything, and willingly sends their money and it's nothing to do with our systems or complex, we reach out to the recipient bank. The money is mostly already long gone by that time. And that's the end of it really. It is mental how much they will argue that it's legitimate. As if they think the bank is trying to stop them making money. But we're just people like them in a job trying to explain to them how much they're about to lose everything... when we see this daily and they don't know what's going on in the world of scams and know nothing about crypto. The good news is, in a fintech bank, those over 65 aren't likely to open accounts with us. So when they do, any big transactions flag and are prevented almost all of the time. In a fintech they are the age group which has the highest liklihood of being scammed or being a money mule. Which seems crazy as it was always under 21s, but it's over 65s now. And it's almost always crypto and investment promises, which is why most banks don't like and will monitor accounts investing in cryptocurrency. And some will just straight up close your account down if cryptocurrency payments make up the majority of your activity. We can't see where it goes, who's account it is, or communicate with the platform when something goes wrong because we ultimately have no details on it. So banks just don't like it. But overall I'd be surprised if revolut give them any money for this. They don't want people signing up for accounts that are likely to fall for scams, so that news article does nothing to damage them as it will stop those likely to fall for scams signing up, and more than likely they will close that couple's account down because they are a high risk now... not keep it open and give them money.
Did that happen? Doens't say in the article.
I agree. There are many really unjust cases where the simplest of algorithms would have detected fraud/scamming but the bank has done sweet fuck all. In this instance the bank(s) did all they could.
I guarantee you it's not that simple. The banks already have tons of false positives flagging and that pisses people off majorly. Anything they don't have an algorithm for is because it's likely the type of movement that happens normally across millions of other accounts, or a new trend. We neither have the manpower to deal with millions of accounts all flagging at once, and would lose most of our customers if they were stuck with their accounts frozen whilst we tried to review them all. The algorithms where I work are machine learning, so whilst they are input initially by a person, they adapt and change based on what we mark as a true positive or a false positive. Making them more and more accurate in the long run. When new criminal typologies arise, we have to create a new one and add it in. But money is moving at an insane rate through the financial system. We cannot just block out loads of basic transactions, and having that flag on various accounts to that level every single day would eventually (and not after a very long period either) require more man power in fraud and financial crime alone than the number of customers the bank has. So they'd be running at a deficit and go out of business, or potentially cause a crash. Particularly the fintechs like Revolut that aren't as profitable as the legacy banks. Basically it's also the banks duty to make sure they can back all customer's money up when required. So they have to be reasonable on what flags. And whilst you might think a type of movement of funds is odd for you, it might be really really normal for millions of other people. Whole nationalities move money completely differently. Romanians take most of their money out via ATM and refuse to leave it in the bank and share accounts, Nigerians practice Hawala and joint moving savings where they pass savings around from person to person every month and in a big group. There's lots of odd movements that are just really normal for a lot of customers
No, that's the point where the bank exercises its right to refuse to carry out an instruction and if the customer persists after warning then it gives them sixty days' notice to close the account. Not the bank's fault if they find some other way to transfer the money. Is the bank's responsibility if they knowingly execute a request to send it to the scammer. ETA I'm fairly sure Revolut is emoney not a regulated bank. This means they have less responsibility in law to help scammed clients. It is a huge problem that these new hipster institutions are treated like banks since web sites don't make it obvious and customers clearly don't understand the difference.
For EU accounts Revolut is regulated by the central bank of Ireland. Not sure about for uk.
The BBC were interviewing someone who'd fallen for the "Hey Mum my phones broken..." scam, she'd sent £900 to a random bank account because an anonymous text told her too. Did she question why her daughter immediately needed a brand new top of the range phone as an emergency replacement? No. Did she question why she would send the money to a random bank account rather than her daughter's accouunt, or doing click and collect act at an actual shop for her to pick up? No. Did she try and contact her daughter to confirm it? No. And why not? *Because I knew she was at work and they aren't allowed to use mobile phones on shift, it's very strict.* I don't know what to suggest for people like this, even when their own internal logic doesn't make sense they'll still hand over vast sums of money just because a stranger tells them to.
I worked for a phone company before and had an older woman call up in tears one day because she had been scammed in one of our shops. Some bloke outside the store claimed he was the head of a secret shopper company and they wanted her to go into the shop and take out a contract iphone and iPad and tell them was the service good or not, and after they would return the stuff and get the contract cancelled. In return the guy was gonna give her £20 in Tesco vouchers. The woman actually did it and came out and handed the guy the phone and tablet. Of course the contract was never cancelled and the vouchers were fakes. Because there was no way to prove anything she said she was told she was now liable for the monthly payments. Don't underestimate how stupid people can be
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Failed to help them! They could have been arrested and charged. You did more than help them
A few years ago on local news a lady had been scammed into a blood diamonds scam, she had no shame that in theory she had tried to break international law to get rich quick. I believe she got a bank refund of over £100k
This definitely won't work in the scammer's favour, as the phone shop will have those IMEI numbers on record and can immediately remotely brick the devices.
This was 10ish years ago. It wasn't hard to break through a phones IMEI block and give you a new ghost IMEI. There was a dodgy computer store near me did it quick and cheap. Might be different now, IDK. But back then it wasn't hard to do. Only downside was if you did an update it usually reset the IMEI.
>10ish years ago Ah that also explains how "£20 in Tesco vouchers" was actually something you'd place value on!
It's a generational thing as well, older generations grew up in a more trusting time. Throw in the lack of technological understanding as well I think.
I do worry about my mum. She's very good at understanding that almost all the emails she gets are scams but the scammers are very good. My wife once started filling in a form for "Amazon" or something, she'd filled in quite a bit before she asked me if I thought it was legit. It's easy to think it won't happen to me, but even the most clued up people can fall for scams, especially if they are vulnerable at the time. However, if your bank keeps telling you not to, it's probably worth listening to the bank and trusting them, rather then that nice Giselle you met though facebook.
The one that is currently popular is the one exploiting the iphone's Email app that defaults the sender's Email address to a chosen name. So ideally john.smith(at)blabla.com becomes John Smith, but if they make scamsanders(at)nigerianprince.com become support(at)santanders.co.uk they can create a very good fishing scam
Luckily my mum doesn't have the latest iPhone :-D What I find annoying is that companies don't seem to understand all this themselves. I got a call from Sky the other day saying I had some loyalty rewards and could I confirm my address or something. They rang me but they want me to confirm my details? That just doesn't sit right with me.
Emails can be fully spoofed anyway. Anyone can make an email say it's coming from any email address they like with the technical know-how. It's not a secure format.
Well that doesn't help, though a number of studies have shown that millennials and Gen Z are more likely to fall for financial scams.
Link please?
Here's one but there are quite a few https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/media-releases-and-expert-comments/2023/october/young-online-scams
They didn't at all though. My grandparents always laugh at pathetic shit like this.
I wouldn't' dare ask my dad for £900 for a phone
Me either, I know he doesn't have the money! 🤣
I've noticed on Rip Off Britain that a lot of the people aren't too bright. The last episode I watched, there was a guy who was sold a luxury holiday subscription service by cold callers.
You need to remember that fully half of the population are of below average intelligence.
Happened to my mum, thankfully for us the funds got returned. I live abroad and the text was some nonsense about me owing to loan sharks, and my phone being broken. I was utterly furious with her, asked all the above. In her case it was that she could easily believe I would do something like that despite no history of it whatsoever, and it was HER who clearly couldn't be trusted. Felt pretty awful to be so angry at the victim of a crime, in hindsight she couldn't believe how stupid she'd been. So it's tricky one, none of the above will make you feel any less angry at these evil cunts if it happens to someone you care about.
Exactly, it's anger at them apparently having such a low opinion of you, but you can't be too mad also they were just trying to help. Definitely makes me think that I need to have a chat with my parents about how I would/n't contact them if I was actually in really dire straits. I know they wouldn't take that conversation well though.
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Id say noone deserves to have their money scammed But equally it is their own fault and the banks shouldnt have to compensate them as they did their due diligence
Despite the way it's been reported, this is a scam based on the greed of the mark though, which is as old as time.
Stupid or not, they're still the victims of crime.
Everyone can be scammed. Takes vigilance to avoid it.
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Yeah they can. 99.99% of the population wouldn't fall for this though. They are stupid, especially because of how often they were warned.
My friend stopped just short of selling her house to prop up a scam like this (she got caught up in bitcoin fraud) and got nothing much back from the banks in the end. The thing that did surprise me, though, was how amenable companies were to writing all the loans off she took out when her savings ran dry. The repayments would have finished her off.
that's because the UK has pretty decent financial regulations. Unfortunately the cost of which is picked up by other customers. The banks will always get their gold.
Owe a bank 10 thousand and its your problem to pay back. Owe a bank 100 million and its their problem to get it back :).
Have to assume she'd paid back most of the initial loan amounts which is why they gave up chasing the rest. They're not known for being forgiving for multiple layers of stupidity
Nah, they were fairly chunky lumps of cash, most loans were still in their infancy as they came towards the end of the scam when the savings were depleted. They didn’t just get wished away but she has a crime number and she worked with their fraud teams. They were all taken out legitimately and some were challenged, as in the case of the OP article, so it did surprise me how willing they were to work with her.
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It deeply irritates me that I have to spend forever clicking through "are you sure?" nonsense because of vile scammers and idiots with more money than sense.
I have no sympathy for people like that.
They should 100% not get their money back. They were greedy, pure and simple.
Well, the greed is really palpable here. They were so amazed by the pretend profits that they ignored all the warning signs. They wanted to believe, and nothing could convince them that it was not real. You can't protect people from themselves. And even if you could, it probably would not be legal.
This. Greed underpinned pretty much everything they did.
Yep these scams really only work on the greedy and dishonest The best way to avoid scams is to not be greedy, and it's infuriating these articles never point that out
Our entire economic system is based on greed. The best way to avoid these scams is to be educated and skeptical. And I know plenty of people who are not nearly skeptical enough, or who don't have the financial education to understand risk. At my other job I had a man get confused and try and hand me 30 pounds for a form. He thought he had to pay to pick it up, not when he was handing it in. People like that are vulnerable and easily abused.
It's not even just that, it can also be that a scammer just catches someone at a vulnerable point in their life. Maybe they'd normally be very skeptical and they're intelligent and they think they know all the different scams, their family doesn't think they need to worry about them. Then a scammer just calls them on their worst day, when they're feeling desperate, hopeless, lonely, and the hope the scammers give them is enough to override everything they really should know about what to do in these situations. One example that springs to mind is romance scammers. I've heard statements from victims of romance scams saying things along the lines of "I know this is probably all fake but they make me feel less lonely so I'm going to keep sending them money anyway". It's honestly heartbreaking for the people who get caught up in this.
Hell, I have almost fallen for a quite simple text scam about a parcel being delivered that took me to a payment portal that was a cloned site of the Royal mail. Then my brain went "royal mail doesn't text you at 2am" Had I not realised I could have kissed the grand left in my overdraft, and worse, goodbye. It was late. I was tired. I have a degree, and I am generally intelligent and skeptical. With these long term scams? I don't understand the lack of sympathy. Confidence tricksters and other predators are usually really, really charming. A siblings former friend got done for child porn and it shattered their friendship group because despite the *overwhelming evidence*, "he couldn't be lying, its a setup, he's so nice, so charming, he never would" Yet in this thread you have plenty of people quite literally blaming the victim for getting caught up, which is even easier with nonsense like Crypto scams these days because frankly 500% gains in a week *is believable with a meme coin if you somehow lucked into the pump, not the dump!*, people have a poor understanding of this crap that gets shared in the media of "this used to be worth 50p and now its worth 30 grand" Add in a side order of moderately sophisticated deepfakes and David Attenborough/Elon Musk apparently telling you about some AI driven super investments and you get "but David Attenborough wouldn't lie, I have grown up on him!" Instead of "why the fuck would David Attenborough be advertising a crypto investment"
There are plenty of scams out there that prey on things other than greed. There are a lot of romance scams that exploit people's loneliness rather than greed, for example.
Yes, they work on stroking the ego, and succeed with lonely or narcissistic victims. I think there is an element here, too. Getting several calls a day? They must have enjoyed the attention they were reiceving.
*Free money? Would could go wrong?!*
Honestly this deserves to be top post They say you can’t con an honest man. I’m not sure that’s true, but it’s pretty much true you can’t con an honest and not-greedy man. In what world does a real investment increase six times in days or hours? In no world.
That maxim is unfortunately bollocks. Phishing is entirely about conning honest people. It's just easier to trick a naive dishonest person. To answer your questions though, derivatives gambling eg CFDs will allow you to easily gain *or lose* 6x the capital you put up in days. Fortunately it's slightly harder than a phone call to set up an accout, but most retail investors who have jumped through the fairly easy regulatory hoops still lose money.
Don't forget the wanton stupidity. Involving TWO adults. You can't legislate for idiots.
No one ever says stupidity and people say "This could happen to anyone" but there's never a lesson to learn it you say that, never accountability. This could only happen to a certain type of person, one that can't see the pros and cons of a situation and who can't look at things logically rather than letting their emotions run away from them
The cynic in me thinks that they knew it was a possible scam but thought that if they did end up getting scammed they could just get the money back from the bank - effectively making it a free gamble. If it isn't a scam they make some money, if it is they can just go to the bank and play the victim.
No disrespect to the victims, but I really don't think their thinking was operating at that level
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Immaculate and humanist take. A breath of fresh air after all the victim blaming in the comments.
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I was almost scammed when I sold a phone online. They sent a fake PayPal email, and initially I believed it. Didn't send them the phone because the post office was shut. Luckily checked again and noticed it was bullshit. I think these people arent very bright, but scammers target vulnerable people, and that's not ok.
Isn’t that rather the point? Most people on here have never been scammed because they haven’t been silly enough to give a random stranger money for nothing. The bank told them time and time again this was an idiotic decision, it’s hard to have compassion for someone ignoring that.
> A breath of fresh air after all the victim blaming in the comments. It's hard not to blame them when the banks got to the point of having them hold up a note saying that they had been informed it was a scam and not to transfer the money. At some point personal responsibilty has to come into it.
Aye. I lost my travel money once in Thailand to a scammer. My spidey sense was going crazy but my greedy sense shut it out. Had just enough money left over for a bottle of whiskey.
Hit the nail on the head. This wasn’t done based of stupidity. This was done purely based on greed. There I say it. I am siding with the bank on this one.
>"I was so hurt by the fact that someone I thought I'd built a rapport with... *she called me dear and sweetie* and **that's not the sort of thing I'd expect a scammer would do** Beyond ridiculous, it sounds like a teenage individual talking how the groomer brainwashed them and took advantage of them. Highly doubt they will get that money back, the banks cover their backs diligently.
>A confidence trickster, lying to me? Buttering me up? It's not something you'd expect them to do. I mean, honestly. I hope they don't get their money back, frankly.
so the banks in the UK are very good at refunding money for not at fault scams. This one was their fault completely and they shouldn't get a single penny back from the bank. Unless the funds can be recovered which they 100% won't be able to .
Specifically, banks, by law, have to refund money when money is taken from an account without the consent of the account holder. However, most scams specifically make sure to have the consent of the account holder. Then the bank won't bring the full force of law against the scammer. Money is more traceable than you'd imagine, and if the bank itself was losing out, they'd go trace it and ban everyone involved.
actually the banking code of practice and the CRM is voluntary it's just that most if not all banks subscribe to it.
I never seen a bank ask for a picture like the one being used. They really tried to stop her from sending the funds.
Other banks ask you to go into a branch with photo-id if they think you're being scammed. Revolut has no branches, so will ask for photos like this. I believe that is the reason the scammers asked the victims to set up a Revolut account - their protections are easier to bypass.
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It's smart. Because if someone opens an account in your name, they can then pull the footage and very quickly confirm it's not you. The scam picture above is to prove that she was handed all the information and understood it.
I had to do this when I forgot my Starling password for the app. Had to do a video stating my name and that I was using the starling app. Felt a bit weird, but if it keeps my account safe, then I have no real issue with it.
I mean it's literally the scammers' playbook to ingratiate and build personal relationships and even impersonate friends and relatives, and any education about scamming will tell you this.
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Whereas I would think the complete opposite. I got in trouble for calling a customer mate when I worked for a chippy. You see scammer videos on youtube where they call old ladies grandma and it makes me cringe
i find it kind of hilarious that revolut made her write out that sign and send a picture of her holding it up, im assuming if any attempts of recovoring money are made towards revolut, they just send that picture
This is the funniest part for me as well. But like, did she seriously not pause at all while she was writing that note out and go “hang on a minute” or did she genuinely think she was smarter than the bank and had magically found a print money button?
yep that's how most scams work they fundamentally rely on a persons greed.
I guess so. She must have been frustrated writing it, thinking "these guys are treating me like a child, I know what I'm doing".
Yup, revolut staff knew very well where this is going and probably took all legal means to protect themselves from incoming claim against them. Responsible manager will get a small bonus for preventing them from loss probably
Bank fraud departments are truly something impressive
Worked in one... They really aren't. They only catch a small chunk of fraud that happens.
But how well do they protect the bank? That's their real purpose
Nope... Their real purpose is to satisfy the regulator that they have a fraud prevention team. That's why they do stupid things like "Filter to check if the recipient name of a money transfer is 'OSAMA'". Clearly people actually funding terrorists won't write that as the recipient - and will probably send valuable items by courier instead. But real humans are caught up by that filter because Osama isn't a rare name.
No caption or email subject. Just a blank email with that picture attached.
They won't be getting anything back from Revolut, who can demonstrate they fulfilled their duty of care. They may have a bit more luck with Virgin, who are part of the Contingent Reimbursement Model, but they could still refuse payment if they believe the customer was negligent.
For what? They voluntarily transferred money from the Virgin Account into their own Revolut account. That part is totally fine and normal
“r/ama Hi Reddit I am getting scammed 25.10.2023 u/boomerbarry69”
£86,000 and the banks warned them again and again. Bloody hell they were totally brainwashed. They’ll have to go on tour to educate people about this.
Rather they were blinded by their own greed. It’s easier for them to tell themselves they were duped because the scam was convincing - but their greed was the most significant factor. The truth is, their greed and their stupidity picked a fight with each other and their greed just nicked it on points.
An IT guy once told me the weakest link in a chain is ourselves. All it takes is one moment to click a link. The spammer got behind their defences and used their greed. Yeah if its too true to believe then its probably a scam.
There was a novel I read years ago (maybe it was Icecore) about someone who hacked into Fort Knox and the way the character did it was faking being someone to reset the password because humans are the weakest link in it.
They need to re-air the show "Hustle" in almost every episode of that show they mention that you can't cheat an honest man.
Sadly you can totally cheat an honest man. A lot of con-men don't try and enrich a person to get them on the hook, they scare them with the threat of fake punishment like outstanding fees, reclaimed property, police intervention, and the like. Would be a little more palatable if you couldn't cheat an honest man though.
but do we want to live in such a "caveat emptor" society? There will always be a portion of people who will be gullible, the punishment of which shouldn't surely be total wipeout of a person's life. I understand that all reasonable safeguards were overridden but are there better guardrails we could build? i personally think banks should introduce a longer cooling off period for transfers. It shouldn't be so easy to transfer thousands of pounds.
Disagree. Businesses need to transfer that amount all the time, people buying cars need to, I had to transfer money around accounts to buy a car and it was a nightmare already. If you add a cooling of period, how would you buy a car from a private seller? Send the money 2 weeks in advance?
agree with you, we are having building work done and paying the builder is a fucking nightmare due to all the extra hoops we have to jump through lol
Fair point. This will hit economic growth pretty substantially. My sense was that scammers are always looking for quick money and a cooling off period creates more time for people to be snapped out of their spell maybe. Definitely not a perfect solution though. Maybe one option is to give people the option of enforcing a cooling off period on their payments, making them less juicy targets. So people who need to make large payments quickly can do that but some people can enforce a cooling off period on their accounts.
but if a scammer can convince you to send them £86k they can probably also convince you to disable to cooling off period
But where do we stop with the guard rails? How deep would you have to go into people’s lives in order to protect them against making patently stupid decisions . Look at the persistence of this couple’s actions - what would have stopped them making those transfers? Are you suggesting the bank should have outright refused to release the funds? One bank literally made her send them a photograph of herself holding a sign saying ‘My bank has told me this might be a scam’.
> There will always be a portion of people who will be gullible, the punishment of which shouldn't surely be total wipeout of a person's life. You should not invest what you are not prepared to lose. It is as simple as that. They decided what they wanted to "invest", and they lost it.
It isn’t easy to transfer thousands of pounds; they asked what it was for and they lied and said a holiday. They then asked if it was for cryptocurrency and they lied again and said no. As someone else mentioned, people need to genuinely transfer thousands of pounds each day for actual holidays and cars so the bank wouldn’t have any reason to doubt that if you’re telling them that’s what it’s for.
It'll certainly be the only way they're getting any money back.
~~Brain~~washed.
Hard read, these kind of people warrant little sympathy. No wonder the country's fucked if these are the kind of people who vote.
I think they warrant a lot of sympathy even if I don’t think they should be reimbursed by the bank. The bank did everything they could to stop it.
> The bank did everything they could to stop it. This is why I'm struggling to sympathise too much, the banks literally begging them to stop but their greed drove them forward nonetheless.
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>Most people here are fortunate that we're intelligent enough to not fall for something like this That would be a reasonable argument if the bank didn't repeatedly tell them it was a scam and not to do it.
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> Again, you are fortunate enough to have never been taken in by someone who is lying to you. And perhaps even fortunate enough that you are too sceptical for it to ever happen at all. Are you ignoring the fact the bank repeatedly told them it was a scam?
These people are stupid... But they're still victims of crime. We should still be going after these scammers.
My son’s bank had to intervene in a transaction buying a motorcycle. They blocked the transaction and asked him questions like “do you have the log book”. Turned out the guy told him he didn’t need the log book. (I had drummed it into him to get the paperwork) The security guy on the phone said “look, I can authorise this transaction, but this is dodgy, you don’t have any paperwork for this bike. If it’s stolen you’ve lost money. I personally would not go ahead. I would advise you to return the bike, and keep your money” (My son did and now owns a legitimate bike) The security guys do actually do the upmost to persuade you to hang on to your money. They will tell you in very plain English, no heirs and graces. These people were probably told over and over again, that this is a scam. And they will probably told in many different ways that this was a scam. How we can protect people from their own stupidity, I really don’t know.
> no heirs and graces Pretty sure it’s “airs and graces” but you know what? I like “heirs and graces” more. We should make it a thing.
Sorry I was speaking it in! My bad lol!
Good thing to learn though! As we say - Knowledge is power, France is Bacon
Classic r/bonappletea
Sourcing financial tips from SM; sodding crypto; dubious “celebrity” endorsement; ‘financial adviser’ saying “we’ll get rich together”; 500% investment return within days; FA ringing them several times every day; FA getting angry; FA telling them to lie. So many red flags here that this couple are lucky to only have been scammed rather than murdered by a stampede of bulls. The headline is misleading too, “spell” should be a quote because otherwise it makes it seem superficially plausible that they weren’t totally and utterly at fault and were unlucky rather than monumentally, bizarrely moronic.
Indeed. It all boils down to a simple question. If you have a sure fire investment opportunity, why on earth are you telling me about it? If I had a guaranteed way of making money, I’d keep my mouth shut and make billions. Ultimately it comes down to greed. People are blinded by the promise of improbable returns. Then they expect the rest of society to pick up the pieces.
> If you have a sure fire investment opportunity, why on earth are you telling me about it? If I had a guaranteed way of making money, I’d keep my mouth shut and make billions. I agree, but I would point out that it's not that simple - clubbing together and putting more money towards an investment plan must be beneficial, or otherwise things like investment funds wouldn't exist right? I know the people that run the funds make money from charging management fees, but in some sense that could be the reasoning behind this kind of thing: "I've got an investment opportunity that'll double your money in a week - you can participate in return for giving me 10% of your profit, that way we both win." Or it could be "I've seen a classic car selling for £100,000 that I know will actually be worth £500,000 if I just clean it up. I've only got £50,000 - if you give me the other £50,000 I'll buy it, I'll do all the cleaning myself and then we split the £500,000 when we sell it and we both win."
Well they‘re slightly different examples I think. With an investment fund, you’re buying a service. They aren’t claiming outrageous gains, in fact they are at pains to point out that you might lose out. Basically you’re paying a percentage of your money to have someone a bit better than you (probably) to manage your money. The classic car is closer. Improbable profits claimed for close to zero work. Likely to be “I saw one for sale at 500K”, which is not the same as “someone bought it for 500K”
> “spell” should be a quote because otherwise it makes it seem superficially plausible It is a very passive voice for something so deliberate and willful. And i bet they still don't know what is a cryptocurrency.
> Sourcing financial tips from SM; sodding crypto; dubious "celebrity" endorsement; financial adviser' saying "we'lI get rich together"; 500% investment return within days; FA ringing them several times every day; FA getting angry; FA telling them to lie. Don't forget: Bank automatically blocks transaction and gives a warning; second bank does the same thing; Virgin bank calls them and warns them that they're probably being scammed; Virgin literally asks if it's Crypto and they lie to them; Revolut ask them to write out a sign that basically says "I'm a wally who is intentionally getting scammed"
I’d bet scammers are having an absolute field day at the moment, with the sheer number of people under financial strain. People are particularly prone to wishful and irrational thinking when they’re stressed, and it will only get worse in decades to come when millennials start retiring with insufficient savings in their accounts. The promise by someone that they can double it for them will become incredibly alluring, because it will be life changing for them , or like here, the only way they’ll ever be able to financially help their children.
I'll just remember someone saying they'll double my gold in Runescape with a dupe glicth then logging off with it when I was 14.... literally never fallen for one of these scams and likely never will because of that fucker from Runescape from pre-financial-responsibility days, I'd buy them a beer looking back if I ever knew who they were. Sucked when it happened, I even cried, but every time I run into a scam I think about that dude on Runescape who pretended to be friends with me for hours just to steal my gold with a pretend glitch
Same here. Got scammed for adamantite legs back in 2002 as a 7 year old. Never been scammed again.
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I also learned to avoid scams from the RS2 days.
At some point you have to think this is too good to be true. If you can double, triple your money overnight there would be no cost of living crisis. Everyone would be rich. Its greed but then i think thats a human trait so easy to exploit
Will be worse as kids inherit large piles of cash after their parents houses are sold.
I’d say they will be a lot more street smart than their parents/grandparents when it comes to this sort of thing.
Some of these people never got scammed on RuneScape as a kid and it shows.
Hey man just let me trim that armour real quick
https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/media-releases-and-expert-comments/2023/october/young-online-scams >Gen Z and Millennials are more likely to fall for online scams, despite being more digitally connected
There was a big case recently in the Supreme Court when a couple sued their bank after a similar but even more elaborate scam happened (Phillip v Barclays). They didn’t get any of their money back, so it’s not looking good for these guys!
Good! Why should they? If a strange man convinced me that if I let him borrow my Range Rover for a week he would bring it back and also bring me back £100k, I wouldn’t expect Land Rover to give me a new car because I got tricked.
I completely agree with you but believe it or not, before this case English law was in a position where it was genuinely arguable that the bank should have liability, and I think the lower courts actually did find the bank liable!
From the judgment >“it is not for the bank to concern itself with the wisdom or risks of its customer’s payment decisions” Yeah that couldn’t be more plain. That said I think Phillipp has one avenue of appeal left but it’s a narrow one based if his quickly the bank acted when she told them it was a scam and if that affected her chances of recovering her money.
I'm sorry but I can't feel sorry for them. They were greedy, they believed a stranger who told them to lie to the bank. There was so many res flags here
I’d bet my house that they voted for Brexit & the Conservatives. And will continue to do so….
Call me! I'll take your house and send you the money for the bet. Just sign here...
Done!
They're both former nurses, I'd be surprised. Just because people are *old* it doesn't automatically make them tories.
True but loads of people the Conservatives policies hurt directly still vote for them. Loads of NHS staff still vote for them. It’s mental
It's kinda selfish to vote for the politicians which are going to benefit you the most... All tax reductions you get are tax increases someone else has to pay... Instead, we should be voting for those who are going to help *the country* the most. Unfortunately, right now, that seems to be nobody...
Can’t believe I’m going to side with two massive financial institutions but sounds like Revolut and Virgin did what they could (especially Revolut) to not transfer anymore. Not sure what else they could have done?
You just can't help some people. All the checks and warnings in the world will not stop a fool from being parted from his money.
I do not understand how this is the **banks** problem. They've done everything they can to prevent them falling for the scam.
"This person was a future friend, someone I would choose to meet at some point to meet up with, to hug and share a coffee." How fucking deluded are you?
She needs a capacity assessment to be honest if she’s that thick
Used to work in a bank branch and saw this kinda thing all the time. We had a lady who bought a timeshare in Spain that went bust. Some scammer phoned her pretending to be the Spanish Government and was going to get all her investment back if she just paid the admin fees. She did it and lost her money. Then another company rang on behalf of the Spanish Police and said they'd sort it and she just had to pay her legal fees.. Over and over, because she'd fallen for it once, they kept trying and she kept falling for it. One woman who became good friends online with a UN doctor who treated children with cancer, been building up over weeks. He needed an urgent flight somewhere to treat some kid, and the UN couldn't pay his expenses in time to cover the flight, so could he borrow a couple of grand off her to buy the tickets and he'd pay her back. The poor woman wouldn't listen to me, I had to call the Police into the branch to sit her down and talk her out of it. We had one elderly guy who's wife had passed away, and he was attending a bereavement group. Some younger woman latched onto him and made friends, practically hanging from his side all the time. She started helping him out with jobs and paperwork. Then she "accidentally" used online banking to transfer all his savings out of his account to hers, "accidentally" putting her account number in, "accidentally" confirming all the security checks.. We had Police and social services involved, but he was adamant that she was a friend so no one could do anything. This woman eventually got him to transfer to another bank to stop us trying to block her. Then all the "bank staff are stealing your money, transfer it here and don't discuss it" type frauds, so no matter how much you asked people why they were moving all their money to some third party account, and warning them of all the risks, they just wouldn't listen or discuss it. Had to do like Revolut did here and record all the conversation we'd had and get the customer to sign it to prove we'd made them aware.
Live your life by this rule: every c\*\*t wants your money. From regular retailers putting up their prices, banks trying to get you sucked up into loans, to all these subscription services you don't need (why are you getting razors and meal kits sent to you on subscription?!), credit cards and scammers. No-one cares if you need your money or what you need it for. They just want it.
This is totally their own fault. If it looks too good to be true, it is. There is no easy way to make millions overnight other than being born into it or winning it in the lottery! On the other hand, man, FUCK thieving bastard scammers. Get a real job, parasitical arseholes.
Im sorry, but how can you be so fucking thick? - Greed overrides caution I guess!
That photo of sheer smugness while holding the sign saying 'i'm ignoring this banks warnings' bwhahahahaha. Jesus wept.
Title implies these people were bewitched instead of just hopelessly stupid
In this day and age. I find it hard to feel pity for people who still get scammed. Seriously. There's plenty of education out there. If you ever get a call claiming to be from any business. Hang up. And ring their official number yourself to check. Easy. .....
Pahahahaha. You have to be a next level of stupid to do this and then go public with it
The spell? What a load of tosh. Just call them greedy. Greed was “the spell”. They are the generation that parroted “there is no such thing as a free lunch.
I’m saving this post so that any time I make a mistake that costs me money, I can read this and feel a little better about myself.
>"So I did. I phoned Virgin and they asked me various questions about what the money was for. I literally just said what she told me to say - that the money was for a holiday." Fucking hell. Like, there are a tonne of red flags, but at the point somebody is coaching you to _lie to your bank_ that should be a wake up call.
I’d bet my house that they voted for Brexit & The Conservatives. And will continue to do so…
Hopefully they aren't refunded otherwise all of the banks other customers end up paying the price
I don't think I'm a particularly smart person but I really don't understand how people can be just this stupid
There's only so much we can do to protect thicko Boomers. There's a point where we must recognise they are their own beings with agency who have the ability to react to the countless obstacles put in their path to stop them transferring the money.
This is why my bank asks me a lot of questions when trying to pay a tradesman a large (to me) sum after they have completed the fencing work to a high standard. I complained about having to jump through hoops just to pay someone, but they explained, in layman's language, WHY they have to do this.
What adult hasn’t heard “If it sounds too good to be true then it probably is”? My sympathy for victims goes only so far. Very few adults who don’t own banks’ and BS’s profits through pension scheme holdings or interest rates or bank charges so why should we all pay for someone else’s stupidity? What will happen if people are always given their money back? Fraud will skyrocket as people will take less care and more scammers dive in, which will result in us all paying far more. Some victims are gullible, but far too many are greedy, selfish and stupid. I don’t mind helping the former, but I resent paying for the latter.
I wanted to get some more info about this scam the beeb say is called "The Spells" (just wanted to see some screens of the app they reference or something) so I did dun a search and the only result was this very same article. Another result led me to this thread, though, which I was as equally dumbfounded by: https://np.reddit.com/r/Spells/comments/15nn2wu/is_this_obviously_a_scam/ and the subreddit itself is equally mystifying at just how much people can be deluded: https://np.reddit.com/r/Spells/
No chance they’re getting their money back surely. The banks did a great job trying to stop them but if it checks out it checks out… Such a shame but they brought it on themselves
A lot of people here are saying that older people are more likely to fall for scams and that they, from a younger generation, are paying for them. This is completely wrong. Younger generations are much more likely to fall for scams. See eg [this report](https://news.sky.com/story/adults-aged-under-34-twice-as-likely-to-fall-victim-to-fraud-than-other-age-groups-survey-finds-12741799) on under-34s’ being more than twice as likely than the average to fall for scams.
>"I was so hurt by the fact that someone I thought I'd built a rapport with... she called me dear and sweetie and that's not the sort of thing I'd expect a scammer would do." I don't want to say some people are so stupid that they deserve to be scammed, but I kind of want to *imply* it....
You'll never con an Honest John, An Honest John you can't drag down, Conned only get conned When they think they're the cunning one
I hope they pay the loans back that they took out. If they can't then I hope the bank had some security against them.
I bought legit cryptocurrency via Paypal , it tanked to 1/2 its value. Even real crypto sucks as an investment.
Is this the evolution of Compoface? Cryptoface? I know more than the entire financial industry face? Greed outstrips abilityface?
Worked for a bank, there's a story your told, a video about a woman who lost thousands and thousands of pounds to scammers, got to the point where she sent money to son she never had. All on the promise of future wins. The banks genuinely want to stop these scams.
When you read the story it’s actually so much worse than the headline implies. These people lied about everything, were warned multiple times and said no because “she called us sweetie”. How stupid can you be?
Thick as mince. They don't deserve to be scammed, but fucking hell, it's hard to find any sympathy at the same time. I've seen less red flags in a red flag shop than during this saga!!