Hi guys,
Unfortunately we have experienced fraud at work and I was wandering if anyone one has experience of this?
Someone impersonated our CEO via email and asked for a payment, which we made, but it wasn't him... The bank got us £14k back straight away but then the account was empty and they couldn't get the other £8k.
We have logged the incident with the police who will be in touch in 28 days.... but we are just worried about our chances of ever recovering the £8k!!
Any help would be welcomed!
Kim
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Hi Kim
I worked for NatWest for 28+ years and had some involvement with their fraud department. Sorry to be the bearer of what could be bad news but you were lucky the Bank were able to get £14k back straight away......Im guessing from that the instruction was for a payment abroad so they were able to recall it before it left the UK?
You certainly need to ensure the Bank's fraud department, rather than just a branch/service centre are made aware of the fraud so I would go back to the Bank and check this out and ask what action they will take and when you will hear from them.
Also - Ive read a few things recently that if you do not absolutely push it with the police they will just give you a crime number, yet they too have a massive fraud department who are keen to get information on such frauds - from what I read it was the lack of local bobbies/police stations understanding of how this works so again - phone them back and dont take no or the 28 day contact as being acceptable.
I have to say also - you need much stronger internal controls putting in place for such an inventuality - such as two authorisations for all payment over a certain amount and not by email! The Bank can guide you on this if you have a relationship manager.
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Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
I'm afraid your chances are very slim as it seems the transfer was a mistake on your part rather than the banks (the mistake over identity of who you were transfering the money to).
It is also unlikely that your insurance company would cover the loss as theft.
This reminds me of a solicitor who was tricked into tranfering several hundred thousand pounds of client funds last year and both the bank and insurance companies turned their back on her because she had transfered the money of her own free will even though she had been tricked into doing so via the trick where the con artist phones you, tells you that the business account has been compromised and tells you that you need to transfer money into a new account that they have set up for you... Now, that looks like a trick straight away and very few people would be stupid enough o fall for that, however, thats not the trick.
The person tell you that you need to be secure and you cannot trust who phones you so the solicitor needs to phone the bank herself.
The next part of the trick involves some techno wizardry that is beyond me but basically the fraudster doesn't really hang up. The solicitor hangs up then phones the bank but in reality its still the fraudster (or an acomplice of theirs) on the line who sounds just like the bank.
The step where the fraudster tells the person to phone the bank themselves in the clever bit that would fool a good many.
I believe that the solicitor lost her practice on the back of that as she could not get any payment at all from either the bank or her insurers.
The good news was that her clients were compensated in full by the law societies insurance but that was because of loss from a solicitor, not because of how the solicitor lost the money.
Sorry, I went off telling a story as an example but it comes around to how the bank will view how the loss occurred.
They will see it as human error that was not their own even though I am surte that as with the solicitor example above the people concerned felt that they had made all possible checks.
My view... Crucifiction is too good for these fraudsters who think nothing of destroying peoples lives and businesses...
Try to get the money back anyway but I would not hold out much hope.
Really sorry Kim,
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
As shown in my example of the solicitor above, some of the scams that the fraudsters are now using would test even the most robust of internal controls.
The obvious one to get past the above would be to phone your landline from your mobile to make sure that it connects before phoning the bank from the landline.
Alternatively phone the bank from a different line all together.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Good everrrning Shaun
Lol. Could tell piles of fraud stories between us I reckon.
I've heard that scam you mention, the phone line was a corking one......have to give some of these guys credit for their ideas, before stringing them up of course. I seem to recall that particular scam was so widespread for a while that it featured on Banks websites as a warning.
Jo 🌻
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Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
Thanks guys.
No, not the response I was hoping for but it was the one i suspected.
We have had mixed messages saying the police might be able to help recover it but I suppose that depends on if/ when they catch whoever did it?! And if they have a load of cash at the time.
It was actually to a UK account in London. The bank traced the source but that's as far as they got.
Kim
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