Why ARE so many customers being hit by fraud?
And why won’t the bank do more to help them ...
TODAY, Money Mail raises serious concerns about fraud committed on Santander accounts.
We have been flooded with complaints from the bank’s customers who have lost thousands of pounds to sophisticated scams.
Dozens of victims say their claims for refunds have been rejected — even though they had no idea they were being duped by confidence tricksters.
Many were enjoying the high interest rates offered by Santander current accounts and have lost their life savings.
In one case, a mother of two had £180,000 taken in 24 hours in a series of 33 fraudulent payments.
A 35- year- old lost his £41,500 house deposit and had to borrow from his family to make up the shortfall, while another couple lost £32,000 set aside for their wedding in May and are now working seven days a week to scrape together the money.
Elderly victims have been left without retirement funds, and a teenager who held an account for six months lost all his money.
The sheer number of cases sent to Money Mail raises the prospect that Santander is being seen as an easy target by fraudsters.
Your stories also call into question whether the bank is doing enough to monitor for — and act on — tell-tale signs of fraud; whether its fraud detection systems are correctly flagging up suspicious activity; and whether or not the bank is alerting customers to potential fraud quickly enough and responding fairly to their complaints.
We have passed a dossier of cases to both the bank and City watchdog the Financial Conduct Authority and requested an urgent inquiry.
A joint investigation by Money Mail and sister website This Is Money also found:
CON artists pretending to be from BT, Microsoft, TalkTalk and even Santander itself routinely steal money from accounts by manipulating the mobile phone payment verification system that customers use for online banking;
VICTIMS are being sent fake texts that are almost indistinguishable from genuine messages they have received from Santander;
CUSTOMERS who have been recently contacted by Santander about fraud are being targeted by crooks who know details about their accounts;
SANTANDER is turning away claims and then failing to give details about how customers can complain to the Ombudsman.
All major banks are struggling with rising internet banking fraud, which has shot up 64 pc in a year to £135 million.
And, like all the other banks, Santander insists it is doing everything it can to stop fraud and help customers.
But the extraordinary number of cases passed to Money Mail has caused us to raise the alarm. The scams revolve around internet banking payments from current accounts.
Santander has attracted almost four million customers to its 123 Current Account by paying 3 pc (cut to 1.5 pc in november) on up to £20,000. Many customers keep large chunks of their savings in the accounts.
Typically, customers are either cold- called or tricked by text message into telephoning the number of a criminal who wants to get at this money.
Often, the person on the other end of the line pretends to be calling from Santander’s antifraud department.
At other times, the fraudsters claim to be from reputable firms such as BT or Microsoft.
Con artists scare unwitting customers into thinking their account is at risk of fraud. They then either lure them into making a payment to a ‘holding’ account to safeguard their savings, or dupe customers into handing over the information needed to make payments.
Sometimes, the customer is deceived into believing no payments are being made at all, thinking only that the crook is a security expert who is acting to protect them against hackers.
The crooks also have to get around Santander’s telephone payment verification system.
When you try to make an online payment with Santander, it sends a code to your mobile by text message, called a One Time Passcode. If the fraudsters have hacked into somebody’s bank account, these codes are all they need to transfer money out.
Some customers are asked to read out the text over the phone. In other cases, the crooks are hacking into computers and taking over their screens. They then lure the customer into logging in to their accounts, so the codes can be entered.
Once the money has been transferred to the criminals’ accounts, it is quickly moved or withdrawn. Santander says it is then hard to trace or recover. Banks are under no obligation to refund fraud losses when the customer, rather than the bank, is at fault.
In all the cases sent to Money Mail, Santander blames the customer for negligence, either because they revealed Passcodes, and so authorised payments, or unwittingly gave fraudsters access to accounts.
richard Emery, of fraud consultancy 4Keys International, who has given evidence in fraud cases as an expert witness, says he thinks criminals are exploiting this text system.
Money Mail understands that the bank takes a more ‘hardline’ stance than its rivals in fobbing off compensation claims when the customer is deemed to have been negligent.
Victims who believed they were speaking to Santander fraud experts, rather than crooks, have asked why the bank did not intervene when there were signs that fraud was occurring.
Santander has told them it is under no obligation to contact customers or stop payments — even if they look suspicious.
In at least one case where Santander became concerned and tried to contact a suspected victim, fraud staff gave up and allowed fraudulent payments to be made when they could not reach the customer by phone.
The FCA says: ‘We take these allegations very seriously. We require banks to have systems in place to minimise the risk of financial crime. Where we find weaknesses in their financial crime controls, we hold firms and individuals to account.’
A spokesman for Santander says: ‘We are very sympathetic to victims of scams and welcome the Daily Mail’s involvement in highlighting these issues. We hope by raising awareness of scams, other people will be prevented from falling victim.
‘We invest substantial resources in ensuring we prevent and protect customers from fraud. All our communication clearly states customers should never disclose security details, such as a PIN, a One Time Passcode or security numbers, or allow anyone remote access to their computer or to collect their card.’