Natwest Bank Transfer Fraud Call HMRC Please help ***Refund in Full***

[waz70]

Hiya,

 

Hoping someone can help me,

I recently received a call from a HMRC phone number and made a transfer as I believed it to be HMRC as it was their phone number, it turns out it was a fraud call.  I realised about 30 mins after the call ended and reported it to the bank and police immediately

 

i have just received a response from the bank advising the below, is there anything else at all I can do?

 

Thank you in advance for your help.

 

 

Further to our telephone conversation we have now completed a detailed investigation into your case which involved liaising with our teams and the beneficiary bank(s) and we are satisfied that the relevant industry procedures have been adhered to.

 

We have been advised by the beneficiary bank(s) that there were no funds available in the beneficiary account to be returned to you so I am sorry to advise that we are unable to reimburse you for your loss.

 

I know this is not the outcome you were hoping for and if you wish to discuss the matter further, please get in touch with us on the above number to advise us of any additional information surrounding your case that you have not disclosed to us already or raise a complaint.

 

You can also visit natwest.com and complete the online complaint form.

We will endeavour to respond to a complaint within 15 business days

[waz70]

Hiya, amount was £998

[waz70]

Many thanks, I do want to take it further and to the I'm ombudsman if needed just not sure where to start.

 

Here are the majority of the details.

 

Received a phone call from a person named Steven Lobo, from HMRC high courts, He advised all calls will be recorded and passed to the courts

 

Advised his badge number was 254156

Advised Court Case ID was DC7010/R

Advised Warrant number was 53A7542P

 

They advised they where calling from HMRC high courts in relation to a tax evasion to the value of £3478, they advised either I or my employer had not completed my tax returns correctly, I advised them I have always been fully employed up until a year ago so my employer should be held responsible not me

 

they insisted it is upto me to check my tax returns are correct and not my employer therefore I am liable, I also asked them why I had not received any communication from them previously and they advised a letter was sent on the 10th of August and they had received no response which is why it has been passed to the high courts.

 

I then asked them to confirm that this is not a fraudulent call, they then advised me to go to the HMRC GOV website, and find the high courts phone number which was 020 7947 7772, they then advised me they would call back in a conference call using the above number and asked me to hang up, so I did and then they called me and the above number was displayed on my phone.  The original number they called from was 0161 250 5092, when the 020 number matched HMRC this was the point I was convinced it really was them.

 

They then advised me that a police officer would be knocking my door within the next 30 Minutes to server the warrant for court and if I did not appear in court I would be arrested.

They advised they would be locking all the below

 

Credit Cards

Bank Accounts

Mortgage

Withdraw Driving License

Passports

And more but I cannot remember

 

They advised I will also be liable for all court charges, solicitor costs etc.

 

Advised they may be able withdraw the case if immediate payment is made

 

They would not accept Credit Card

 

They appointed Solicitor named Adriana Lucyna Mirga to hold money

 

I advised I could pay 1400 at most

 

They walked me through the process of setting up online payee transfer

 

Warning popped up, I advised them, they advised this is because it is going to a solicitor and not directly to HMRC and would be using an Escrow account and they directed me to HMRC again which explained what this type of account was.

 

I then paid £998 as this was the maximum allowable via Natwest

 

Could not make any further payments so they asked me to call online banking and arrange the payment via them.

They advised me to not tell them it was HMRC which is what flagged it up as fraud for me.

 

 

[waz70]

6 minutes ago, borisbeaver said:

Oh dear.  The HMRC will never ring you - they will always write to you. Never ever go on a conferance call as they can control your phone once connected, to make the scam appear real.

 

 

Yep I know this now after the event

[waz70]

1 hour ago, BankFodder said:

I'm afraid you're not getting much help here – and I expect that there may not be much solid advice that we can give you. It's terrible and I'm very sorry for the loss – and also I expect that it has made you feel very bad and undermine your confidence as well.

Would you mind me asking you a bit about your profile – gender? Age – within say, a 10 year band – 40-50, 50-60, et cetera.
It's simply that this kind of information might help others to could happen to come across this thread.

It seems to me that you need to make a complaint to your bank about their lack of security because they have a duty to monitor these kinds of things and if this was an unusual transfer then I would have thought that they would want to ascertain the name of the recipient account holder.

I know that on my bank now, you have to put in the name of the recipient and I suppose that it does a check and then comes back to you with a confirmation that you can go ahead.

Anyway, you have nothing to lose. Make a complaint to your bank – I'm sure they will knock you back – and then you should go to the ombudsman.

I'm afraid don't hold your breath – but you should certainly try.

Be careful when the bank gives you their final response. Read it carefully because you may well find that it isn't exactly what you're complaining about. Thanks frequently take your complaint, and then distort it in a way which suits their own purposes and then come back at you and tell you that this is what you complained about – I know that this is not the result you are expecting… Blah blah blah.

There are nasty bunch. They are almost as bad as the fraudsters.

Hiya,

 

Thanks for the feedback, I will be compiling a letter to the bank and see where I get, some key points I am going to include in the letter are:-

 

• Why should liability be down to just me?
• Banks notification not good enough, why have a continue button, the notification pops up majority of the time when making a payment to anyone?
• How was the receiving account setup
• How quickly did they notify the receiving bank of the fraud
• Where did money go from the receiving account
• It is Natwest's processes that have broken down to allow this to happen in the first place
• If account is not an authorised account why not make the transfer a bit slower to allow time to reverse

 

If anyone can think of anything else to add please let me know

 

Age is 40-50 and Male

 

Many thanks again for your help.

 

Edited November 10, 2020 by waz70

[waz70]

Hiya,  Thanks for the response will the FOS not just reject it if I have not complained to the bank first?

[waz70]

Many thanks, I will complain and see how far I get..... 

[waz70]

I will do, I do not think their pop up message is enough when making a payment, if you are at the point of setting up a payment you are already believing you are paying a legitimate company or person, and then all they are doing is putting the decision into the victims hands to alleviate their responsibility in the matter.

 

I will compile a letter hopefully tomorrow and put a copy on here for everyone's comments if that's ok

 

 

Thanks again

 

 

[waz70]

Last Wednesday Natwest replied today.

[waz70]

Hiya yes I have the crime number.

[waz70]

14 minutes ago, Ethel Street said:

 

The only thing about that though dx is that FOS apparently have a massive backlog of cases and it might take up to a year to get a FOS decision, according to Which. I've no idea if that's still true but if current delays are anything like that long there's nothing to be lost by lodging a further complaint to NatWest, as they have invited OP to do. I'll guess there will be an answer to that much quicker than any response you'll get from FOS.

Hiya, I do agree, my plan is to complain to the bank first get their final response then escalate to FOS that way FOS can't say after a year I need to complain to the bank first as much as I want to go directly to the FOS.

[waz70]

Hi All,

 

I have now composed my draft letter for Natwest, can you please let me know if you think there is anything I should add or remove.

 

Really appreciate everyone's help.

 

Links I have used for information are:-

 

https://www.psr.org.uk/psr-focus/app-scams

https://blog.fscom.co.uk/authorised-push-payments-and-the-voluntary-code

https://www.business.natwest.com/business/security/app-code.html

 

 

 

Dear Natwest Bank

 

Thanks for your response regarding your detailed investigation.  I do not agree with your outcome. Please provide in depth details regarding your investigation confirming all processes that have been reviewed timings etc

 

Please confirm where the money has gone when it went into the recipients account ensuring you  include the dates and times of withdrawal from the account etc.

 

Please confirm dates and times of when you contacted the recipients bank and how quickly they dealt with the fraud, please also confirm the contact method used when contacting the receiving bank, i.e email, telephone call or post.

 

I do not agree the notification provided by yourselves is enough to prevent fraud, it is only a small box and provides one or two small sentences, and is to easy to continue past, this feel like it has only been incorporated to allow Natwest to move liability from yourselves to the customer, this needs to be a series of questions which the account holder has to read and answer yes or no to at the very least.  The app code advises the notification should be an effective warning to the customer, and should be provided throughout various stages of the payment journey advising the customer of the risk of APP scams. The warnings should be clear, impactful (influencing the customer’s decision making), timely and specific (tailored to the type of customer and particular APP scam risk), at no point was this met.

 

The notification which your app provides regarding a risk of fraud pops up all too often, this pops up when you are paying both legitimate businesses and people that I am fully aware of, this needs to be tailored to pop up only when the risk is real.

 

When I called to report the fraud to the bank the lady on the phone instantly recognised this was fraud if your staff are trained to recognise this instantly then why are your processes not automated to prevent this, if your own internal automated systems cannot recognise and prevent fraud then how is an untrained customer meant to prevent it?

 

Where the bank is suspicious that this could be a fraud payment the payment should also be delayed especially for such a high amount and again this condition was not met as the payment was instant, your app is flagging it up as a possible fraud so why did it not delay the payment?  The payment should be blocked if it is a possible Fraud and then the account holder should call the bank to complete the transfer if needed.

 

The APP code advises PSPs should analyse transactional data and customer data, using fraud data and typologies to identify payments that are more likely associated with APP fraud. PSPs will have to ensure that their transaction monitoring software is tailored to detect APP fraud I do not believe your software is tailored to APP fraud as it triggers when it is not fraud, and did not provide a clear warning to me at any point that it may be APP fraud.

 

I have also never received any training from yourselves regarding APP fraud, I think this needs to be provided to everyone either on a personal basis or via advertisements pushed through your banking applications that people are forced to watch at least once before they can continue onto their online banking.

 

I fully believe this is a process breakdown via Natwest and will be taking this to the Financial Ombudsman Services should a satisfactory response not be received within the next 15 days.

[waz70]

Hi all, Just remembered to update you on this post, my letter worked I had a full refund from NatWest in January.

 

When I get a minute I will upload a copy of their response just need to edit out anything personal

 

Many thanks.

[waz70]

Natwest response attached which confirms refund, sorry for the delay.

Natwest Letter Cropped.pdf