Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Bank takes £70k hit for Axa fraud
Barclays failed to stop woman, 87, sending savings to thieves
THE good news is that I’ve help recover £70,000 that an 87-year-old woman lost to an investment fraud.
The bad news is that the case illustrates just how adept crooks have become at plundering the vulnerable.
It began when the woman from Stafford saw what she thought was a genuine online Axa Insurance promotion for its savings bonds.
Her enquiry produced what seemed like an entirely professional response, with supposed compliance checks and a well-produced brochure including Axa’s Financial Conduct Authority details.
But Sylvia – I’m withholding her surname – was not to know that the email addresses client@client-axa. com and enquiry@private-axa.com were not genuine, and that her messages about wanting to invest were going directly to the crooks.
Last year, victims lost £78million to clone investment scams like this, according to Action Fraud, and the Financial Conduct Authority warned they are often “sophisticated and extremely difficult to spot”.
A key chance to save Sylvia from the clone gang came when she visited her Barclays branch to transfer the money.
Banks have become much better at protecting savers in recent years, for instance by alerting police when
a vulnerable customer who’s being targeted by cowboy builders asks to withdraw a large amount of cash.
In this case, however, the safeguards were tragically absent.
“When I paid the money, all the lady in the bank asked me was did I know the company I was paying,” Sylvia said.
“I showed her my file on Axa and said it was a big company. Nothing else was said.”
So the £70,000 transfer to the rogue account was sent.
The horrible knowledge that she’d been scammed only dawned when Sylvia was not sent log-in details for her supposed new savings bond account, and her emails bounced back.
She went back to her Barclays branch but says she was told “there was nothing they could do as I instructed them to send the money.”
I advised Sylvia not to give up hope, pointing out that the Financial Ombudsman Service has made clear that banks have a duty of care to their customers and should not refuse refunds if they have fallen for sophisticated scams, unless they can prove negligence by the customer.
So Sylvia took the matter further, and her complaint to Barclays included my story from last May showing how crooks were using adverts on Google to lure victims to fake Axa sites.
A four week wait followed while Barclays investigated, with Sylvia telling me she was “feeling dreadful, not sleeping, nauseous”.
Then the bank got back to say it would be refunding all her savings.
“I think your name being involved helped,” she said.
“So thank you so much for your help and support, I had no knowledge of ‘a duty of care to customers’ until you pointed it out.”
Barclays said in a statement: “It is evident that she was the victim of a very sophisticated investment scam and after investigation, due to the circumstances of this scam, we refunded the funds that were lost.
“We apologise for any inconvenience caused when we were first contacted and would urge all customers to take steps to verify that the person or business they are paying is legitimate.
“We have no higher priority than the protection of our customers’ funds and have invested significantly in fraud and scam prevention initiatives to keep customers secure.”
‘‘ I showed my file on Axa and told the lady it was a big company