KATIE MORLEY INVESTIGATES

CONSUMER CHAMPION OF THE YEAR If a company has let you down, Katie is here to fight your corner

LETTER OF THE WEEK I suffered messy divorce, then fraudsters stole £70k

I recently divorced my husband and, as we separated our finances, things got very messy. The whole thing left me in a terrible state and I was referred to a psychiatrist, who prescribed me with antidepressants, which I am still taking.

I am blessed with supportive parents, though, and last year they lent me some money so I could buy a flat. On Dec 6, a few days after these funds landed in my account, I was phoned by a woman pretending to be from the Lloyds bank fraud department, on a number matching that on the back of my debit card.

This woman said a fraudster was trying to access my money, but she comforted me and said she was there to help. She convinced me to transfer £70,000 into three separate accounts in order to protect it. Towards the end of making these transfers, I became suspicious. I called my bank’s fraud department, the number for which I found on the internet. They told me I had been scammed.

Of the £70,000 I transferred, Lloyds was only able to block £15,360 from being stolen by the fraudster. So I have lost £54,640. The bank is saying I didn’t do enough to make sure I knew where I was sending the money, so I don’t qualify for the funds to be reimbursed through its antifraud scheme. The loss is absolutely devastating, especially as my world had already been turned upsidedown by the divorce.

I have spoken to Lloyds at length over the phone, but I feel it has repeatedly dissuaded me from complaining in writing. It is pressuring me to take my complaint to the Financial Ombudsman. I feel relevant information is being ignored.

AF, SUFFOLK

As is so often the case when frauds like this are successful, you were experiencing life-changing trauma at the time. There will be people who read this and chortle to themselves about how intelligent people don’t fall for such trickery. Some will even say you don’t deserve your money back. But they are wrong. No one believes they could possibly fall victim, until they do. These fraudsters happened to target you at a moment when your mind was clouded by a broken heart, among other things. I felt you did not deserve to suffer the loss of a lifechanging sum of money as well.

At the time of the fraud, you were under the observation of a psychiatrist. You were taking venlafaxine to treat depression, and you still are now. The side effects of

Write to Katie Morley, Telegraph Money, The Daily Telegraph, 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0DT

Please do not send original documents. Include an address, phone number and separate notes addressed to all organisations authorising them to talk to Katie. For full terms see p9 or visit telegraph.co.uk/go/ consumerchampion. You can also email kminvestigates@ telegraph.co.uk this drug include confusion and dizziness, which can affect decisionmaking. In light of this, I told Lloyds that it needed to treat you as a vulnerable customer, as per Financial Conduct Authority rules that state it must take extra steps to ensure you are treated fairly.

I asked you if you had made Lloyds aware about your recent divorce and the depression diagnosis, and you said that yes, you had. But when I spoke to Lloyds, it said it wasn’t aware of the situation. You are adamant that you did tell the bank, but as you never submitted your complaint in writing, it appears that this crucial information may not have made it into Lloyds’s notes.

Further to this, you say Lloyds actively discouraged you from filing a complaint in writing. Lloyds denies this allegation. But when you told it you would prefer to write than talk, you say the Lloyds complaints handler said: “No, it’s all right, you don’t need to do that.” I find this very troubling, as you ought to have had a right to complain via email or letter so you could make your points in full. Until you had been given this chance, and the complaint had been fully reviewed, the Financial Ombudsman should have been out of the question.

I am also troubled by a number of other things you have told me. You made the three fraudulent transactions, all between £20,000 and £25,000, in the space of just two hours, yet Lloyds’s fraud detection systems failed to spot anything suspicious. You received no phone call to check the payments were genuine. Transferring such large sums of money to a new bank account was highly atypical of your normal spending patterns, so I’d have expected Lloyds to pick up on this.

While transferring the money, you also say you remember seeing an on-screen fraud warning that read: “Be sure you’re sending the money to the right person – check with a trusted source.” You say you checked

A couple of weeks ago, our drains became blocked. I emailed and called our water provider, Thames Water, and nothing was done. I was told numerous times that a vehicle was nearby and my job was next, but of course nothing happened. Eventually, on Friday morning, I emailed the chief executive. Marvellously, within three or four hours, the job was done.

Today I received a call from his department and spoke to a lady who apologised for the delay and explained how busy Storm Dennis had made them. Totally unexpectedly, they are going to send me £50, which is very nice of them. It was “a right result”, as Arthur Daley would say.

AS, VIA EMAIL

Thames Water boss fixed blocked drain within hours

A right result indeed. Your case goes to show the power of emailing a chief executive directly. Happily, there is nothing for me to do here.

Correspondence during the coronavirus outbreak

Dear readers, I have a small favour to ask. As the coronavirus situation develops in the coming weeks, I may be working from home a bit more, making it trickier for me to receive physical mail. I will still be able to receive letters, but there may be a longer than usual delay in response. Please can I ask that, if you are able, you email me with your problems instead? I still very much want to hear from you, so please keep your letters and emails coming. Thank you, and I wish you all the best.