Track down fraudsters

BANKS have been fobbing off fraud victims with the same old excuse for years.

By the time someone realises their account has been ransacked by a scam artist, they call their bank and are told devastating words to this effect: ‘Your money has disappeared without a trace and cannot be recovered.’

It’s hard to believe, but this has often been the truth.

Once they have your money, conmen typically use online banking to ping it through several accounts extremely quickly.

As the cash whizzes between banks, each firm has to contact the next in the chain and tread around strict data protection rules to share information.

Any crumbs of stolen money discovered along the way are returned to the victim.

But the trail quickly runs cold, either because one of the banks won’t co-operate or it simply gives up the chase.

Until now it’s been hard to argue with this excuse for the simple reason that the banks usually haven’t been at fault.

Typically, the customer has been duped by an email or a telephone trickster and has authorised a cash payment from their account.

Unlike with a credit or debit card payment, that meant the customer — not the bank — was liable for losses.

This loophole in consumer protection law has left thousands of victims out of pocket and is why the new fraud tracing technology being offered to banks is so vital.

Thanks to Vocalink, part of Mastercard, banks will for the first time be able to see stolen money travelling through different accounts, freeze it and then return it to victims. As in any business, rolling out new software on a big scale takes time and energy.

Most banks seem like they’re on board, which is terrific, as it would be a great shame if some were dragging their feet.

Every day the full rollout is delayed, 100 more people face losing their life savings.

Security minister Ben Wallace left no room for doubt in his interview with Money Mail: the Government is busy clearing the way for the tool to be used without breaking any laws. He must now stick to his word.

The time has come for banks to end the excuses — and start returning stolen money to all victims of fraud and scams. Your votes count WHEN Money Mail launched the Wooden Spoon Awards in December 2008, then editor Tony Hazell wrote that many of the thousands of letters, phone calls and emails we received from readers could have been ‘sorted out if only someone in the company had bothered to listen to your legitimate complaint and taken responsibility for resolving it’.

It’d be easy to conclude that nothing has changed; you are still being fobbed off by energy firms and left boiling mad by banks.

But there’s evidence that our Wooden Spoon is forcing firms to sharpen up their acts — BT’s response to last year’s failings being a case in point.

In 2015 and 2016, barely a day passed without a letter about BT’s poor service arriving in our postbag. Bosses promised to sort the mess in January and the number of complaints has started to fall. So your votes do make a difference. Please also enter your Service Star submissions.

We’ll print the best tale of outstanding service to show the bunglers how it’s really done.

The Trump slump

VERY rarely should you listen to experts who claim it’s time to sell all your shares in a major market such as the UK, U.S. or Japan. Usually there’s a hidden agenda behind the doom-mongering.

But I’m making an exception today. U.S. shares look overpriced and with Donald Trump in the White House, a slump could be around the corner.

When the likes of Robert Shiller, the Yale university professor who correctly predicted the slumps in 2008 and 2000, say they’ve spotted the hallmarks of the 1929 Wall Street Crash, you can’t ignore it.

After a huge rise in share prices, I’d consider cashing in my profits — they could be on to something. d.hyde@dailymail.co.uk