£31K FRAUD FORCED BOSS TO LIQUIDATE HIS CLEANING FIRM

STEVEN Vallance was forced to liquidate his firm after fraudsters cleared his personal and business accounts of £31,000.

He received a text allegedly from NatWest saying his debit card had been used to buy Amazon goods worth £2,499, a transaction he had not made.

The text appeared in the same chain of messages he had already received from the bank so he saw no reason to doubt it was genuine.

Mr Vallance called a number in the text and spoke to someone purporting to be from NatWest’s fraud department. He was asked several security questions and was told £2,499 had already left his account but would be refunded.

Mr Vallance, 44, who lives in Essex, was asked to enter his card in his card reader and read out a series of codes to confirm the refund.

After the call, he spoke to his partner Claire who felt uneasy. So he immediately called NatWest using the real number but an automated message said there was a waiting time of up to two hours due to severe weather.

Mr Vallance finally got through on a third number and was told £18,000 had been transferred from his personal account and £13,000 from his business account. The money had been transferred into a Barclays account belonging to a payee he had never heard of. ‘I felt sick. Like I’d ruined our future and that of our baby daughter Jessica,’ he said. He later had to liquidate his commercial cleaning business. ‘ The money in the account was for tax I didn’t have enough time to build up again,’ he said.

NatWest said that, while its call waiting times were longer than usual, the payment had already been authorised by the time Mr Vallance called.

A spokesman said: ‘We sympathise with Mr Vallance and appreciate that this has been a very distressing experience for him and his family. We take our responsibilities to preventing scams very seriously and always support the victim of a scam in the recovery of their funds on a best endeavours basis.’