Thief failed bank security question and still got £4k!

A ROYAL Bank of Scotland customer was fleeced out of thousands of pounds when a conwoman hijacked her account despite failing a security question.

Charlotte Higman, 39, claimed RBS staff repeatedly ignored the bank’s own security alerts that the transaction for £4,318 might be fraudulent.

The conwoman incorrectly answered a security question about Mrs Higman’s job, a recording of the phone call revealed, but was still able to take the money.

The call was also marked by the bank as a ‘potential account takeover’ after the fraudster failed voice verification checks.

The bank had called Mrs Higman’s landline number after the conwoman asked for the account to be reset, citing security reasons. But police discovered that the fraudster had called Mrs Higman’s landline provider to divert the number to her mobile.

The fraud took place in January 2017 but it has taken more than a year and a half for RBS to refund the cash. Initially, the bank insisted that Mrs Higman must have known about the transaction.

Mrs Higman, a mother- of-two, said: ‘The bank said that the person was in the home, they did the transactions from the home and they passed all the security questions correctly – and that’s why they believed that I’d done it.’ However, after being approached by BBC1’s Watchdog show on Mrs Higman’s behalf, RBS agreed to go back over its records.

A spokesman for RBS said: ‘On review of Mrs Higman’s case, and in light of new information provided to us, we have refunded Mrs Higman in full for her loss.’

He added: ‘We would like to apologise to Mrs Higman that the service provided fell short of the high standards we expect.’

Facility takeover fraud – when a fraudster abuses personal data to appropriate someone’s bank account or another service – rose by 7 per cent last year to 24,070 reported cases, according to Cifas, the fraud prevention service.

In September, a new banking code of conduct was announced to protect victims of financial abuse better. The voluntary guidelines, which most banks are expected to sign up to when it is finalised next year, were announced after a campaign by the Daily Mail.

Mrs Higman, from Totnes, in south Devon, added: ‘I just feel really angry that someone’s been able to do it that easily.’