‘MY DAD DIED IN SQUALOR AFTER BANKS ALLOWED FRAUDSTERS TO STEAL HIS £1M’

QMy father died of a stroke in April last year and since then I have been managing his estate. Grieving his loss has been difficult enough, but on top of that I have come to realise he was the victim of a scam for over seven years. It lasted right up to the day before he died. He lost his entire life savings of more than £1m, around £700,000 of which was with Barclays and £300,000 with HSBC.

My father was a successful businessman in his heyday, but he deteriorated in his latter years. He suffered from cancer, had heart problems and hypertension, and took various medicines. He had severe scarring across his face from childhood burns, which caused him great pain and affected his mental state. He lived alone for over a decade before he died after his marriage broke down. He was so poor he sometimes had to ask me for bus fares to the doctors. It breaks my heart to think of someone taking advantage of him while he was in this highly vulnerable state.

I told Barclays about my suspicions and it invited me to complain. I provided evidence in abundance. But then I heard nothing. I tried to contact the bank on a number of occasions, only to be told that I couldn’t speak to the scams team. I was told to wait to be contacted. I was then told to raise a formal complaint, so I did this on June 9. I received a call from someone who said they would keep me updated

By October I had heard nothing, so I called again. Then my complaint was closed. In early January I raised a second complaint and was told I would be contacted by March. No one has ever called. This treatment is completely unethical, unprofessional and inconsiderate, especially given the nature of the circumstances.

When I asked HSBC to investigate, it agreed to refund the £71,000 my father had lost since May 2019, when anti-fraud measures were introduced. But it refused to reimburse the rest.

– MF, via email

AAfter your father died you visited the grotty flat where he was living and made some upsetting discoveries. Strewn around the room were shaky handwritten notes saying things such as “anxious”, “blackmail” and “deadline”. Going through his computer you found threatening emails from someone purporting to be from an investment firm.

You find the thought of your father keeping all this a secret, while frightened and alone, incredibly painful. You broke down as you realised these criminals were hounding your father for money in the days before he died of a stroke.

The handling of your father’s case by Barclays has been an utter disgrace. Its failure to investigate, once it was made aware of a crime of this scale, was indefensible. Things changed when I got involved. I supplied Barclays with a spreadsheet of about 140 suspected fraudulent transactions spanning seven years, which it spent weeks analysing. I also supplied it with evidence of your father’s cancer. Other health issues were trickier, as 10 years’ worth of his GP notes had mysteriously gone missing from within the NHS. In the end Barclays agreed to assess his vulnerability “on balance of probabilities”.

Following my involvement, Barclays agreed to pay your father’s estate £345,000, half the money lost. But it wouldn’t go further. It said, somewhat shockingly, that it was unable to establish that your father had been vulnerable.

A spokesman said: “This is a tragic case of a highly sophisticated and sustained attack by criminals. The account activity appeared to be typical spending that would be expected on a personal account and the customer raised no concerns with us. Unfortunately, we are unable to establish that our customer completed any due diligence to verify their payees. A number of the customer’s transactions were declined; however, we recognise more could have been done by us.”

When I asked HSBC to investigate it agreed to reimburse your father’s estate for various international payments totalling £7,000, which it had previously excluded for being “outside the scope” of its fraud reimbursement model. But it declined to refund his losses predating the code, which were around £200,000. You felt HSBC was using the code to avoid paying for losses before it was introduced, and I agreed.

An HSBC spokesman said: “We are a signatory to the contingent reimbursement model code to ensure fair and reasonable outcomes for customers. It was introduced on May 28 2019 and does not apply to payments completed before this.”

It strikes me the different reimbursement approaches employed by the two banks rather conveniently suit their own agendas. Had Barclays adopted the same approach as HSBC it would have paid your father more than £500,000 instead of £345,000, as his losses mainly took place after the 2019 fraud code was brought in. And had HSBC split the transactions 50/50 like Barclays, it would have paid £150,000 instead of £93,000. I have advised you to go to the Financial Ombudsman for the rest of the money, to keep fighting for justice for your father. I will back you all the way.