John lost £9,000 – but his bank barely seemed to care
WHeN John Godden first realised he had been duped out of £9,000 by scammers, he made a panicked call to his bank.
It was just an hour after the fraud had occurred and the retired engineer assumed Santander would try to claw back his life savings as a matter of urgency. In fact, he would later discover, his bank’s fraud team made just one attempt to contact the receiving bank, TSB — and gave up when the line was engaged.
Santander did not then try again until the next morning, finally getting through at 9.07am to report that their longstanding customer had been a victim of a crime. unsurprisingly, by then his money was long gone.
John, 71, who lives with his partner rosemarie Harrison, 66, received a call on Saturday, october 6, at around 5pm from someone claiming to be a Sky representative. The caller offered him a 35 pc discount on his TV bill and seemed to know a lot about him, including bank details such as his debit card number.
John, from St Albans, Hertfordshire, did not accept the discount.
But the call had made him so nervous he rang his bank, Santander, to cancel his Sky direct debit.
Ten minutes later, he had a call from what looked like a Santander number. A well-spoken man with no hint of an accent told him someone had tried to set up a direct debit on his account for £2,000 and asked if he had authorised it. When John said no, the man, called Michael, told him he was the victim of fraud and needed to move his money to another Santander account to keep it safe.
He quickly logged into his online banking and transferred £9,000 to the account details given. The caller stayed on the line, reassuring John until the payment was complete.
He then said he would make John an appointment at his branch for the Monday to go through what had happened.
‘The man seemed to know all of the bank’s procedures which made me believe I was talking to the right person. He seemed like a nice bloke,’ said John.
He adds that what reassured him the most was that he was asked to write his own name in the payee box when he made the online transfer. He thought this meant he could be sure the money was going to another account in his name. He had no idea that banks don’t check the name given as a payee matches the one on the account.
This new seemingly basic yet vital check will not come into force until next year.
As soon as John put the phone down he felt uneasy and suspected he had been scammed.
He made an urgent call to Santander’s fraud hotline at around 6pm and was told the bank would investigate.
By then, less than an hour after the scammer called, £8,200 of his money had already been withdrawn by the criminal. But the remaining £800 was not debited until around 20 minutes after the bank was alerted.
Had Santander responded immediately, it could have stopped the fraudsters taking that, too. But the bank only tried to contact TSB once and, when the line was engaged, it waited until the next day to try again.
By then the account was empty. When John called to complain, Santander refused to refund him because he had authorised the payment. The bank would not even help John when he realised he didn’t have the money to make his monthly loan repayment.
Instead, Santander threatened him with a late penalty charge and even tried to offer him another personal loan.
In the end John resorted to borrowing money from his son.
It was only when Money Mail intervened that Santander admitted it could have done more to help and refunded the £800, plus a £200 goodwill gesture. John says: ‘Santander was as much use as a chocolate fireguard. They told me because I had contributed to the fraud they weren’t going to give me my money back.
‘I’ve been a loyal customer for years and their attitude towards me is disgusting.
‘I had to borrow money from my son until my next pension payment was paid because that was all the money I had.’
TSB says that, if it had known about the fraud within two hours of the money leaving John’s account, they may have been able to get the money back.
A spokesman for Santander says: ‘Having conducted a full investigation, our decision remains that by returning £800 to Mr Godden we are putting him in the position he would have been in had the attempt to contact TSB been successful.’
He adds that an alert would have flashed up on John’s computer screen as he made the transfer, warning him that if he had been instructed to move money into a ‘safe account’ it was a scam and to stop now.