Our client ‘Oliver’ enlisted the help of Barings Law after he fell victim to a crypto currency scammer and lost more than £3,500.
Oliver was using Instagram when he stumbled across an advert for crypto currency investments, after clicking on the ad, he was then contacted by an unknown male via Telegram, an app that allows you to access your chats across multiple devices. After speaking back and forth for several days, Oliver was persuaded to send a total of £3,699 over six payments in eight days via bank transfer and Apple Pay on the promise that his funds would grow, and he would in turn make a profit.
After three days, Oliver had a conversation with his brother and showed him the ad, however his brother immediately recognised it as a scam. After that conversation, Oliver was prompted to block the person he communicated with to avoid being hounded by them for more money.
Despite taking immediate action by contacting his bank to inform them he had been a victim of a scam; Oliver was unable to recover the £3,699 on the basis that he willingly transferred the money to the scammer.
At no time during the transfers to the scam account did Oliver’s bank issue him with any warning, even though the recipient was set up as a new account and a large financial sum was sent over.
Oliver contacted Barings Law and our legal experts began their investigation into making a claim against his bank for compensation. We contacted his bank and put the argument forward that they should have intervened as the payments had all the hallmarks of a scam, this was primarily down to the unusual nature of the transactions which were not aligned with Oliver’s usual spending habits and were all sent to the scam account in a short period of time.
Our team also stated that the bank should have identified the strange behaviour and put relevant processes and procedures in place to alert them to the unusualness of the transactions. As a result, they also argued that the bank was responsible for Oliver’s losses as they failed to exercise reasonable skill and care.
The bank responded to our team continuing to deny liability that they were at fault as Oliver had authorised the payments by sending them in the first place. Due to this reason, the bank in question would not grant Oliver a refund.
However, after liaising back and forth with their team, our team managed to secure a 50% refund settlement of £1,715.56 which includes £25.56 gross interest at 8%.
*Amounts are before fees and disbursements
