‘MUM HAD SEVERE DEPRESSION BUT HSBC LET HER SEND £290K TO CRYPTO CONMEN’

QI am writing on behalf of my mother, who in February of this year fell victim to a scam in which she lost £290,000 – my parents’ life savings. I encouraged them to talk to their bank, HSBC, the police and Action Fraud, which they have done. However, it has resulted in nothing.

My mother is a vulnerable person who has suffered with mental health issues since 2019. After a long period of deterioration she became suicidal, desperately wanting to die, and was eventually diagnosed with severe clinical depression.

She was admitted to a psychiatric hospital where she spent four months undergoing electric shock treatment. Once it was completed she was allowed to go home under the close guidance of a support worker. She has been fantastic and still supports my mother today.

I usually try to keep tabs on my mother’s affairs, including her finances, as my father isn’t very confident with such matters. However, she kept this scam a secret from me and by the time I found out it was too late.

It transpired that someone rang her pretending to be from HSBC’s fraud department and urging her to move her money to various “safe” accounts because criminals were after her money. Of course, she didn’t twig it was a scam and did what she was told. She was terrified of losing everything.

My parents have never moved large amounts of money around like this, so for HSBC to watch them empty their accounts without much intervention is unbelievable, especially in today’s world.

To top it all off, HSBC said it would not refund a penny because it claimed “no fraud” had taken place in relation to my mother’s HSBC account. This is because she transferred the money into her own First Direct account and then into a cryptocurrency account held in her own name. The way my mother has been treated has made me so angry. Can you help?

–MC, via email

A

Your poor mother fell for what is known in the dark world of scams as a “classic recipe”. Useless when tried on anyone already switched on to it, but when deployed on someone vulnerable and unsuspecting, it works an absolute treat. Predicated on fear, this particular ruse was designed to fool your mother into thinking she was beating the criminals, when in fact she was handing them her life savings.

Crucially, she was manipulated into ignoring the bank’s warnings that she might be being scammed. As a result she told staff time and again that the transfers were genuine.

But far from acting “negligently” or “carelessly”, as banks often claim scam victims have done, your mother acted in good faith at all times, thinking she was diligently assisting the bank and protecting her own money.

In 2019 banks brought in an anti-fraud code that was supposed to protect vulnerable people from scams and treat them fairly once they fell victim. Yet, in what seems like the most unfair response it could possibly have mustered, your mother was told no fraud had taken place. Clearly, this was absolute balderdash.

Following my involvement HSBC had a change of heart and decided to refund £269,000 of your mother’s lost money. It said it had successfully stopped the remaining £30,000 from being transferred.

An HSBC spokesman said: “We are committed to protecting customers from scams, as well as educating them on how they can protect themselves, and are sorry to hear that Ms C was the victim of an ‘authorised push payment’ scam.

“On this occasion we did not provide the required warnings to Ms C about the scam and missed opportunities to intervene and for that we are truly sorry. We have reimbursed all funds that were lost from her First Direct account.”