Boss can’t sue worker who lost f irm’s £200k to fraudsters
A PUBLISHER has failed in a bid to sue a former employee who lost almost £200,000 of the company’s cash to a fraudster.
Yvonne Bremner took Patricia Reilly to the Court of Session after she handed over the money in an online con in October 2015.
Scammers sent emails to Mrs Reilly in which they pretended to be Miss Bremner, managing director of Glasgow-based Peebles Media.
They managed to persuade the credit controller, of Bishopbriggs, near Glasgow, to make payments totalling £193,252.
Bankers refunded the company £85,268 and Miss Bremner, 58, sued Mrs Reilly, 64, for the rest.
Lawyers for Peebles Media claimed Mrs Reilly had acted negligently by ignoring warnings on the firm’s internet banking account which indicated she could be dealing with fraudsters.
She maintained she had acted in good faith and had not been trained to spot internet fraud.
In a judgment yesterday, Lord Summers dismissed the action, stating: ‘The fraudster is the real culprit. The pursuers suffered a major loss. The defender lost her employment. It is a tragic case.’
During a hearing in February, the court heard Miss Bremner went on a week’s holiday in Tenerife in October 2015.
She said that before she left, she told Mrs Reilly and her line manager that Peebles did not have any payments to make to other companies. But Mrs Reilly then received emails from ‘Yvonne
Bremner’, instructing her to make payments – and she did so.
Miss Bremner said her employee had ignored fraud warnings, failed to spot spelling mistakes in the emails and did not notice that the messages contained words she would never normally use.
Lawyers for Mrs Reilly said she had not received any training on internet fraud and consequently could not appreciate that anything had gone wrong.
In his judgment, Lord Summers described the scam as ‘whaling’, adding that this was a ‘relatively new phenomenon’ at the time the fraud was carried out.
Unlike phishing scams, which send out a large number of emails to many recipients, whaling is a targeted attack, often aimed at senior executives.
Lord Summers said: ‘I do not consider that the pursuers were negligent in failing to provide training to the defender for a circumstance that could not have been envisaged.’
He added: ‘I was asked by the defender to take into account the animosity between Yvonne Bremner and the defender in making my assessment of her evidence. Yvonne Bremner certainly made some unpleasant remarks about the defender in the course of her evidence.
‘She described her as “the office gossip” and “untrustworthy”. She characterised her as “lazy” and complained she avoided hard work... there were many indications she was ill disposed to the defender. I have come to the conclusion, however, that I do not need to venture down this road.
‘The loss was a heavy blow to Yvonne Bremner. I understand why the defender’s behaviour upset her. I do not find it necessary, however, to comment on whether she became antagonistic to the defender and what effect, if any, that had on her evidence.
‘There was sufficient objective evidence to enable resolution.’
‘The scammer is the real culprit’