Scammers took £20k ... but my bank only got me £5.14 back!
WHEN John Sutherington was told that fraud investigators had recovered some of the £20,000 scammers stole, he was hoping for good news.
But he was left sorely disappointed after his bank said it had clawed back just £5.14 from his missing savings.
The pensioner, 69, who is undergoing punishing treatment for a rare bone marrow disease, said he ‘laughed out loud’ when he saw the measly amount returned by Santander.
Mr Sutherington, a Liberal Democrat councillor, said: ‘I thought, “Is that it then? That’s great. Any chance of getting back the other £19,994.86?”
‘I wish I’d never had the letter and didn’t know. It’s a bit of a joke and it rubs salt in the wound. I don’t understand why, if they know where that £5.14 has gone to, why they can’t get more or all of it back.
‘The stress of it all hasn’t done my health much good.’
The retired printer, who has two daughters and seven grandchildren, added: ‘The money was for my children and my grandchildren for after I’ve gone.
‘I’ve got aplastic anaemia, and don’t know how long I’ve got left. This was their inheritance.
‘But I won’t give up. I’ll go to the ombudsmen. And when this is all sorted, I will think about moving banks. I don’t really trust Santander any more, despite their catchphrase Here to Help.’
The letter from Santander was signed off ‘here to help’, but not signed by the fraud investigator who sent it.
Mr Sutherington, from Anstey, Leicestershire, is sharing his experience in the hope others would not be taken in by fraudsters using a similar ploy.
He received an unsolicited phone call in March from someone claiming to be a Virgin Media employee offering to reduce his monthly bill. He admits he made a huge mistake in handing over his bank account number and sort code. He later had a call from a supposed member of staff at Santander who told him his existing account had been hijacked but that a new account could be set up to transfer his money into.
Mr Sutherington transferred a total of £20,000 via online banking – first a payment of £12,000, then one of £8,000. To his horror, he later found that the money had instead been transferred into an account set up by a fraudster and his cash has vanished.
Doubts began to creep into his mind and he called Santander to check ‘within the hour’ of the scam taking place. He was told there had indeed been contact from the bank that day, and he hung up, believing all was well.
Santander said: ‘Whenever fraud occurs on an account, Santander will contact the bank where the money has been sent as quickly as possible to attempt to hold funds before they are moved on. In Mr Sutherington’s case, we did this and £5.14 was remaining.
‘However, in investigating this case we identified that we could have identified the fraud during a telephone call with Mr Sutherington on March 10.
‘If we had done so, we’d have been able to prevent an additional £2,021.07 from being defrauded from Mr Sutherington.
‘We have returned this amount – and provided an additional £200 as a gesture of goodwill.’
Banks typically refuse to reimburse victims of bank transfer scams, where people are conned into sending cash to a fraudster’s account. If a customer authorises the payment themselves, they have no legal protection to cover them for losses – unlike other financial frauds where the criminal makes a payment without a customer’s consent.
In the first six months of 2017, 19,000 people fell for bank transfer scams involving £101 million, according to UK Finance. Only £25.2 million was returned.