He reveals family friend lost £10k but bank wouldn’t refund her HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR By Home Secretary vows to get justice for victims
Ian Drury
SAJID JAvID has warned banks to take urgent action to prevent customers transferring their money to fraudsters.
In a major breakthrough for the Mail, the Home Secretary revealed he would work with the Treasury to force banks to take more responsibility. He spoke out after we revealed customers are losing up to £1 million a day in bank transfer scams — and launched a campaign demanding measures to tackle the scandal. Mr Javid pledged action after he admitted he was personally aware of the issue; one friend of his family had been cheated out of £10,000, while an elderly constituent had been duped out of thousands of pounds.
In the first six months of the year, £145 million went missing through ‘authorised push payment fraud’. That works out at almost £1million a day and is nearly 50 pc more than in the same period of 2017. Experts believe the true figure could be even higher.
Out of the £145 million stolen, banks returned just £31million to their customers.
They often refuse refunds, blaming customers for approving the transfers.
Politicians and consumer champions say the figures are alarming and have called for more protection, as well as compensation for victims.
In an interview with the Mail, Mr Javid said it was time for banks to ‘do the right thing’ and be far more willing to reimburse money that is fraudulently taken from accounts.
He said: ‘It is something that we are looking at . . . in terms of the police and the Treasury because there are issues with the banks and how they handle this.
‘I actually know people who have suffered from these kinds of scams. An elderly lady in my constituency, who had unfortunately given out her [bank] details when she had been misled on the phone, lost a few thousand pounds of her life savings.
‘I also had a friend of the family who lost money in a scam. She runs her own business and works really hard to build it up.
‘She had £10,000, her entire capital for the business, taken from her account. The bank refused to give her the money back.
‘Eventually, she went to her MP and the bank finally agreed to refund her, but only after four or five months fighting.
‘People should not have to go to their MPs to get banks to do the right thing.
‘I would like to see movement on that and I’m going to work with the Treasury to see what more we can do to help.’